Reading Time: 125 Minutes
Title: To Fix What’s Broken One Last Time
Author: ImaliFegen89
Fandom: Burn Notice
Genre: Angst, Action Adventure, Crime Drama, Episode Related, Het, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Relationship(s): Michael Westen/Fiona Glenanne
Content Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Canon-level/graphic violence, canon-level mental/physical torture, mild suicidal thoughts, non-consensual drugging, non-explicit sexual content, canon-level discussions/hallucinations of child abuse, DIscussion-domestic violence , death-minor characters, canonical deaths, kidnapping, explicit language, canon-level alcoholism, use of bio-weapons.
Beta: Rangersyl, Taiamu
Alpha: Aethir
Word Count: 187,781
Summary: After killing his mentor, Tom Card, Michael decided to surrender instead of running away. He thought that was the best way to keep his friends and what was left of his family safe. Little did he know that fate had other plans.
Artist: AngelicInsanity
Part One – The Time it All Went to Hell.
Chapter 1
Hotel InterContinental
Miami
13:00 Hours
When you were in the middle of a high-stakes intelligence gathering operation, concentration was one key element. Whether you were in a car, or on the street, or doing your surveillance poolside, you had to stay focused at all times. Because even the slightest detail had the power to decide the difference between a successful mission, and a complete disaster.
Michael knew that, of course. It was another one of those countless tradecraft lessons that had been drilled into him through training and experience. Tyler Gray was about to make his appearance for the meeting they had set up with Tom Card, the man who had given the order that led to the murder of Michael’s brother.
If all went according to plan, they were going to have a full confession in their hands, in addition to the evidence and the witness they already had. Once the murderous bastard had been handed over to the agency, the CIA could throw Card in the deepest and darkest hole they could find, for all Michael cared.
To think, he had looked up to the man, trusted him… Michael sighed. The betrayal stung like no other.
He had been Michael’s mentor, the senior CIA agent who had made sure Michael became the operative he was. And, ironically enough, the man he had come to think of as a father.
Frank Westen had never been anything other than an abusive bully, and a deadbeat bastard. The only childhood Michael knew had been a living hell he couldn’t wait to get out of. The man who was supposed to be his father had made his son pay for his very existence by using him as a punching bag to alleviate his own frustrations and sense of failure.
Michael had only been seventeen when he’d made his escape, and had shown up at the military recruiting centre with nothing but twenty bucks in his pocket and the clothes on his back.
It had been one of the happiest days of his life.
Then of course, there had been another senior operative, the spy who had taken Michael under his wing, Larry Sizemore. It had taken a lot longer than it should have for Michael to realise he was a dangerous, psychotic murderer who thought he could shape Michael into his own twisted image.
Memory of the now dead operative made Michael wonder idly whether he’d ever thanked Fiona for getting rid of the bastard for good.
And now… there was Tom Card.
It was as if he was destined to attract the worst father figures the world had to offer, the ones who would inevitably end up betraying him in the most horrible ways imaginable.
Michael tried not to sigh as he stared at the side entrance to the hotel. It would only attract Sam’s attention. He was not in the mood to be interrogated by his well-meaning friend.
Of all the people who could have turned their backs on the scant few morals the Company still upheld, Michael had a hard time believing it turned out to be Tom Card. He had never seen beyond the facade throughout all the years Card had been his training officer, had never even caught a glimpse of the deceit buried beneath the veneer of dignity, honour and trustworthiness.
The things he had seen, had lived through and experienced since his burn notice, had shown Michael a part of his grey world he had never been exposed to before; agencies within agencies, networks within networks, all existing upon layers made of personal visions and agendas where things like accountability, responsibility and duty took a backseat to personal glory, wealth and profit.
He wanted to rage…to fight against the rot that had taken over the one thing he had always put above everything else, the institution to which he had dedicated all that he was for a damned long time. At the same time, there was a part of him that was frustrated, simmering in an impotent fury that had morphed from his initial disbelief. Now, he was starting to question whether it was worth it to put his own life and the lives of the people he cared about on the line over and over again to fix something that was, most likely, permanently broken.
The rest of him was just tired, weary with bone-deep exhaustion that stemmed from the constant grief threatening to drown him every waking moment. Nate, his kid brother, had been a pain in the ass most of his life, but he had come through every time when Michael had needed him – something Michael had never imagined possible.
Michael had returned the favour by putting him in a position he never should have been in the first place…had paid for everything his brother had done for him by getting him killed.
He knew it was the one thing in his life that he would never ever be able to forgive himself for, just like his mother refused to do.
Try as he might, Michael couldn’t prevent the view of the walkway and the hotel lobby he was supposed to be surveilling from fading in his vision as the memory of his earlier visit to his mom’s intruded, unbidden, despite the fact that he needed his full concentration elsewhere.
***
The thick cloud of Morleys smoke welcomed him home as it always did. The sharp smell of tobacco never failed to burn his nose, and he could almost taste it in the back of his throat.
“Michael.” Madeline graced him with a sideways glance that didn’t linger even for a second.
Michael expected it, of course. Ever since Nate’s death, she rarely ever looked at his face, let alone in the eyes. What used to be a bright blue gaze was dark and dull these days, almost lifeless, as if her grief over Nate was morphing into an unfeeling numbness. It only ever sharpened into something else whenever he came around.
That sharp glint spoke volumes of her disgust and horror… and blame. It pierced him to the core with the precision of a fine-edged dagger and carved the depths of her hate into his very bones.
“Hey, Mom,” he said quietly as he took a few steps closer to the dining table, eyeing the clothes she had haphazardly piled onto it. “Big day tomorrow.”
She took two framed photos off the shelf behind her and shoved them inside an empty cardboard box she had on the chair next to her.
“We start gathering evidence against Card,” Michael continued, hoping she would look up. “About the secrets he’s keeping… the reason Nate died.”
She stiffened as if he had slapped her. As if in her mind, Michael had lost the right even to say his brother’s name out loud. It was a subtle thing, but it was obvious to Michael because a part of him – the part where all the demons that like to torture him lived – was expecting it…watching out for it. When she finally looked up, she made no effort to hide her true feelings.
“There’s no reason Nate died.” Her smile was sharp enough to cut, and it hurt.
“I understand how you feel, Mom,” he started, swallowing thickly, “I want you to know that Card’s gonna pay for what he did. I promise you that.”
She turned away to pick up another photo, one of him and Fiona this time.
“And all the things I’ve done,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as his mother, “they’ll be worth it.”
The photo went into the box without much care.
“Michael, I’m leaving Miami.”
For a moment, his mind went blank. Leaving Miami? The only home she had ever known? But why?
The analytical part of his brain took over as he looked around, taking in the boxes and the pile of clothes on the dining room table in a new light. It really shouldn’t have taken him that long to figure out that she was packing, not just keeping herself occupied by moving stuff around so she didn’t have to look at him.
“I guess that would be a good idea.” Michael ventured hesitantly, his mind racing a mile a minute to figure out why she was leaving so suddenly, “It will sell the story that we really died in–”
“No, it’s no ruse,” Madeline cut off his pathetic attempt at guessing her motives. “It’s permanent.”
His mind screeched to a stop, completely stunned out of the turmoil that was brewing in it. He blinked.
“Your aunt Jill said I could stay with her,” she continued as if it was no big deal. “And I’ve been missing her for a long time. So, that’ll work.”
Two more folded pants and a blouse with a floral print went inside a duffel in the time it took Michael to snap out his stupor.
“Don’t, uh–” he had to clear his suddenly dry throat a little to get the words out. “Don’t you think that’s a little drastic?”
Madeline let out a long sigh as her gaze wandered around, taking in the living room and kitchen, glancing off the ghosts of memories, the good and the bad, that always lingered.
“I can’t keep watching you turn yourself inside out, working with these…monsters,” she said finally, weariness seeping into dull the sharpness in her gaze. “Tyler Gray and Card, and whoever’s next–”
“It doesn’t matter,” Michael said quickly, frantically, while his hands moved of their own volition to pluck the photos out of the box and put them back where they belonged. “There’s no one next after this… no one.”
“Right.” She scoffed.
Ma, don’t do this to me, not now…
Michael had to avert his gaze so that his unshed tears couldn’t betray his desperation. “I need you.” He choked out.
“I can’t.” Her cutting tone was final. Steel bands tightened around his chest and Michael tried to breathe through the pain.
“I can’t go on like this,” Madeline murmured, softening her words for the first time in a long time. She was looking at him with eyes that held a watery sheen. “…living in a place where everything reminds me of the sons I have lost.”
Sons.
Michael swallowed again, willing his composure to hold, to not crumble then and there. He knew he hadn’t heard her wrong. She didn’t say son, but sons, in plural.
Had she written him off so completely already? Was he beyond her forgiveness? He had thought going after Nate’s killers would be a way to begin closing the gaping chasm that had grown between them. To redeem himself, to get her to look at him again without loathing and contempt. Was that not the case anymore? Was it ever?
“I–I’m still here,” he breathed, his entire being rebelling against the belief that he had lost her for good, too.
“I don’t know about that,” his mother didn’t spare him any kindness. “I need a new beginning, Michael.” Stunned as he was, with his mind struggling to hold onto the pieces of him that were busy falling apart, he almost missed her next words. “…And I want you to do me a favour–”
He nodded mechanically, not really understanding. If there was anything, anything at all, that he could do not to lose the only family he had left, he would do it.
“When this business with Card is over, I want you to start over, too,”” she said, as if that was the easiest thing in the world.
***
“Look alive, people,” Jesse’s sudden call over his earpiece dragged Michael back to the present, rather unceremoniously. “Gray’s here for the meeting.”
The ex-CIFA agent was seated at a table by the pool with Fiona, where they could easily keep an eye on the main entrance while comfortably sipping the cocktails the bikini-clad servers from the pool bar brought them. Michael, on the other hand, had the dubious pleasure of sharing the hot, cramped, and stifling interior of the borrowed Nissan with Sam. They were discreetly parked next to the resort’s exit on the other side.
Michael brought the binoculars up for a better look. Sure enough, he saw the arrogant set of familiar broad shoulders in a white shirt and grey jacket wading through the scantily-clad vacationers. The determined, unapologetic gait of the ex-Marine sniper had people hastily jumping out of the way, clearing out of his path.
“All clear over here. We’ll stand by.”
Michael heard the small sigh that escaped his friend before Sam even opened his mouth.
“You look a little edgy there, buddy–”
“Don’t,” Michael snapped, the anger in his tone directed mostly at himself. “We have a job to do.”
He hadn’t realised that his fingers were tapping a fast rhythm on his knee without his conscious input, betraying his anxiety. He grabbed the hi-res binoculars again, since that was the only thing he had at hand to hide his face behind, as inadequate as it was for a cover. Sam meant well, Michael knew that, but now was not the time for one of his talks.
Maybe that time would never come.
Sam, of course, had never been good at taking a hint no matter how clearly you enunciated your words. Not when he was of the opinion that what he had to say was important. “You’re worried about your mom, It’s okay, perfectly normal even–”
If you only knew. Michael exhaled slowly, keeping his frustration and inner turmoil under a tight rein. He could see absolutely nothing, even though his eyes were wide open and pressed against the small viewfinder.
“The thing is, Mike–”
His salvation came in the form of a sudden, sharp sound. A confident, staccato knock on a closed door was heard through the radio on the dashboard – the one they had tuned into the channel connected to Gray’s comms.
“Quiet.”
“Good to see you, Tyler.”
That was Card.
“Another sunny day.”
That was a code.
“It’s a scorcher.”
That was a counter. Michael had to trust that the sniper had just given the all clear to the traitor.
“You gonna invite me in, or are we gonna talk in the hall–”
Then there were more sounds; a chuckle, a back slap, and the thud of a door closing, followed by the soft snick of a turning lock. Michael knew something was wrong the moment static crackled over the radio.
“Okay, what the hell?” Sam frowned. “We just lost him.”
“Wait,” Michael said, checking the radio channel again. There was nothing but a squealing tone. “Is that–”
“No signal.” Sam confirmed what he already knew.
“Frequency jammer. Shit!” Michael cursed. “That’s not good.”
Sam twisted in his seat, his gaze fixed on something behind them. “And that’s not good either.”
Turning around in his seat with the binoculars trained at the rear view, Michael saw what the ex-SEAL had noticed.
“Card brought a team,” he snapped, getting out of the car in a hurry. There were three armed agents piling out of an unmarked SUV. All of their gazes were fixed on the eighth floor, where Michael knew Card had a room booked. It was not much of a stretch to assume that there were more of them surrounding the entire building even as they watched.
“Wait,” Sam caught up to him, stumbling and half-jogging to match the fast pace Michael set. He was trying to get to the building before the other team saw them. “Wait. Mike, hold on–”
“Sam–”
“Look, look,” his friend panted as he did his best to keep up. “If he wanted Gray dead, Card wouldn’t have brought all these guys. He’s not going to kill him.”
Michael didn’t need Sam to point that out. That was not what he was worried about. “Card’s gonna bring Gray in and hang everything around his neck. Panama, Nate, Anson…all of it.” He explained as he opened the small wrought iron gate that led them to the elevator on the east entrance. “We’ve got to haul Card out in cuffs and take our chances now before his team’s in place.”
***
Michael stepped out the moment the elevator door opened with a ding. They were in a hallway that only had a corner suite at the opposite end, which was a good thing, security wise. There were only two possible ways of entry; the elevator and the stairs next to it.
“Keep an eye out,” he said, pulling his gun out of the holster at his hip and taking off the safety as he drew closer to the closed door.
“I should go in with you,” Sam protested immediately, and started to follow. His stubborn friend was more interested in keeping an eye on Michael than any impending threats.
“If Card’s people are coming, I need a heads up,” Michael countered, nodding at the window further down to their left. From there, Sam could watch the entry points to the floor and the movement of Card’s team on the ground at the same time.
Besides, the last thing Michael needed was an audience when he finally confronted the man who broke his trust so completely as if it was nothing.
“Now, get over there and keep an eye out.” He emphasised his point by turning Sam bodily around and shoving him out of the way.
Once Sam was in position, Michael gave him a firm nod. Then, taking in a deep breath, he steadied his weapon in a two-handed grip, and loosened his shoulders.
The moment of truth.
Finally.
Michael would have his answers and justice for Nate, one way or another.
With his Smith & Wesson held firmly in front of him, he kicked the door open and went in to confront the traitor.
***
The room was small, and had a desk pushed against the only window that offered the unrestricted view below. Card and Gray sat across from each other. Gray had his back to the lounge furniture while Card had the wall behind him. They both looked up, startled, as the door almost flew off its hinges when Michael kicked it in.
Card recovered first from the shock of his loud, unexpected entry.
“Hello, there.” His voice didn’t betray the slightest apprehension or surprise as he greeted Michael.
“Show me your hands, Tom,” Michael ordered, pointing his gun straight at the man.
Gray stayed where he was, too shocked to move. “What are you doing?”
Michael took in Card’s posture with a quick glance. There was a rigid set to the older man’s shoulders as he sat with his body slightly angled. The tight corners of his eyes and the twitch in his jaw hinted at the fury he fought to keep hidden. However, what was most concerning, was the way his left hand rested on the table while the right stayed conveniently out of sight.
“Gray,” said Michael, his gaze never leaving the other man, “he has a weapon trained on you.”
“Michael Westen,” Card smiled, doing nothing to deny his words. “Back from the dead.”
“Not just me, Tom,” Michael murmured, taking two more steps inside the room, closer to the seated duo. “The whole team. It’s over. The truth’s coming out. Put the weapon down!”
“Right,” Card said, his smile morphing into a mocking snarl as his right hand came up to reveal the suppressed Sig-Sauer P226 he had been concealing under the table. Gray drew in a sharp breath at the sight of the gun which was now pointed at him openly, but stayed still. “I’ll put my gun down right after you, killer.”
Michael had no intention of doing that.
“Tom, drop the weapon,” Gray reiterated.
“This is between him and me, sport,” Card aimed him a look, his finger stroking the trigger in a way that encouraged Gray to keep his mouth shut and hands on the table. Then he turned back to Michael. “I should have known something was going on, especially when those just-too-cute files showed up from your loft.” His gun hand moved, and its aim travelled towards Gray’s head.
“Tom–”
“Put the weapon down,” Michael ordered again as he moved a few more steps closer to Gray, trying to cover him, “Don’t do–”
Card sprang up from his chair with the speed and agility of a man much younger, letting out a piercing whistle that halted Michael’s movement on pure reflex.
“What are you gonna do, hmm? Shoot me?” Card goaded, “You’re not the only guy in the room who has a team outside. I told my people that I was coming to see an unstable asset.”
His gaze travelled to the right, towards the window and outside, where Michael knew a heavily armed CIA team was scrambling to surround the building. He exchanged a glance with a pale-faced Gray, trying to figure out a way to get Card to stand down.
“God damn it, I don’t want to do this!” Card’s sudden yell startled both Michael and Gray. “I don’t want to do this,” he said to Gray. “I don’t want to do this.” He said to Michael. His gun, however, never wavered from where it was aimed at Gray.
Gray saw what was coming just as clearly as Michael did.
“Don’t,” the ex-Marine yelled, getting off the chair and stumbling hastily back a step. “Don’t!”
Michael felt helpless, even though he had his own gun trained at Card. The CIA man had a calm expression on his face, too calm in fact, as if he had gone beyond reason, beyond sanity, beyond the fundamental rules that kept them on the side of the good.
“I’m so sorry,” Card said softly to Gray, “He painted me into a corner the minute he kicked down that door.”
“No, No!” Michael yelled, “Tom–”
“He killed your brother!”
Michael almost didn’t hear the soft pop of the suppressed gun going off. Gray’s fall registered in a bizarre slow-motion in his periphery, as if his mind couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. What snapped Michael back to reality was the muted thud of Gray’s body hitting the carpeted floor. The downed sniper’s white shirt rapidly turned crimson as the blood poured out of the new hole in his chest.
“Hands on your head, Hands on your goddamn head!” Michael screamed, shaken to the core at the shot Card had taken without even looking.
His scrambling mind was torn between keeping the murderer covered with his weapon and dropping to his knees to check the unmoving man on the floor. A quick glance at the position of the wound told him that Gray was beyond his help. Card hadn’t missed.
“Listen to me, Michael,” Card murmured, complying with Michael’s order to move his hands behind his head, with the gun and all. “Gray killed Anson. Gray shot your brother. He murdered your brother, he did that.” He walked around the table slowly, and came to a stop with Gray’s lifeless body on the floor between them. “Right there, he did that.” He nodded at the pool of blood on the ground, emphasising his point.
“You ordered him to,” Michael gritted out hoarsely, finally finding his voice. “You are responsible.”
“I never wanted Nate dead,” Card growled, “I never would have taken that shot!”
“You tried to have me killed.” Michael snarled. “You sent a fucking F-18 to Panama on top of Gray to make sure we were all as dead as we could get. Pressman never made it out. You did that!”
“And that is my own personal hell,” Card gentled his voice, his eyes welling up on cue as if he meant it. “It wasn’t supposed to go like that–”
Michael did his best to breathe evenly, struggling to keep his wavering gun trained on the man as much as he could. It was hard not to let the sincere-sounding words affect him the way they did, even then.
“You were like a son to me.”
A chuckle escaped Michael then, full of incredulity and bitter disbelief. His own eyes burned as he tried not to let the imploring look in Card’s gaze pierce through him as it almost always did.
“You’re out of your mind,” he grunted, his voice wobbling a little.
Even after everything he had done, the bastard still had an intense effect on Michael. He knew all of Michael’s weak and vulnerable spots, and knew exactly what to say to shake his convictions.
“We both know that it is a big, bad world out there, Michael. And guys like you and me – we make the calls. We get up in the morning and we know how the ends justify the means.” Card kept on talking like he was talking a man off of a ledge. Which was exactly how Michael felt as he glanced around, looking for something, anything to make sense before bringing his wavering gun up to aim at Card again.
“Why do you think Anson had to go, huh? I’ll tell you why. Because he knew what I had going on in Yemen, in China, in Pakistan–”
The countries Card named stirred something in Michael’s mind. He had a flashback to the report he submitted to Max Newman all those months ago – the report he had compiled after painstakingly, obsessively going over everything he had on the shadowy organisation that didn’t even have a name. The organisation that had been responsible for his burn notice, and introducing the world’s most unhinged, psychotic and deadly people such as Carla, Victor, Gilroy, Vaughn, and Simon to his life.
After reading and rereading everything he had gathered on the out of control network, Michael had started to notice inconsistencies, things that failed to stand out at the beginning – tiny little things such as a side note on a seemingly random flight, money transfers that went nowhere, a bunch of lost receipts, or a few receipts that didn’t belong, a purchase here and there that never made into any sort of record or inventory. Those insignificant things had made no sense, initially, until Michael had begun to see fragmented connections that had hinted at a bigger picture, capturing the attention of the part of his brain that loved analytics and probing into patterns.
That follow-up report was the reason Max died, Michael realised. That meant, the damned report was also responsible for putting him on Anson’s radar – the man who had been hell bent on resurrecting the organisation Michael had burned to the ground, from its ashes.
Michael had always wondered how exactly Anson Fullerton had known that Michael had begun to have doubts…to suspect that things hadn’t ended as everyone had hoped and celebrated as a once-in-a-lifetime achievement before putting it to rest.
Maybe now he had his answer. Card was Anson’s inside man. His own double agent inside the agency – talented, well-respected, well-connected pillar of the community, a giant in the venerated halls of the Central Intelligence Agency. One man no one would ever have suspected.
Until now.
“Someone has to carry the bag to the front line,” Card’s insistent voice broke through his distraction, and Michael saw him slowly lowering himself to the ground, groping around Gray’s belt for his gun. “So I pulled the trigger on a couple of really bad guys–” he pulled out Gray’s Heckler & Koch Mark 23 without breaking eye contact with Michael, and shot the wall behind him twice in quick succession, startling Michael again. “Or we rolled the dice on a couple of really bad conflicts.”
By then, Michael felt as if he was pointing a prop at Card, not a loaded gun, for all the use he had for it. His grip on his weapon trembled as if he was a bumbling new recruit fresh out of training instead of the seasoned operative that he was. His mind was scattered in a million, senseless directions. He watched helplessly as Card placed the freshly used gun back into Gray’s lifeless hand, calmly staging the scene to look as if the ex-Marine had gotten a couple of shots off at Card before Card had put him down.
“You–you’re talking about treason, Tom,” Michael finally found his words.
Card straightened again, squaring up to Michael with his gun pointed down. He had already figured out Michael was nowhere near in control of the situation they had brewing between them.
He was right, of course. Michael felt utterly and completely lost, unmoored, as he witnessed his truest beliefs – the things he had believed in his core, the foundation he had given the best years of his life to while holding nothing back – crumbling before his very eyes.
“It might be time for you to grow up, my friend,” Card said, smiling, taking great pleasure in the sight of Michael losing his faith in everything he had fought for all this time.
“You’re not my friend,” Michael murmured, averting his gaze to stare at the gun Card held in his hand, still pointing to the ground.
“But I was,” Card reminded him, sounding so damned earnest it made Michael’s skin crawl. “And I damn sure can be again.”
He kept talking when Michael chose to stay quiet, willing his brain to make sense out of the surreal mess in his sight, as well as the one in his mind.
“We can do things, Michael – great things, necessary things. There’s a long to-do list, and there’s nobody left to do them.” The look his old trainer levelled at Michael was a curious blend of contempt, admiration and pride. “You wiped out the last batch. It’s just you and me now.”
Michael swallowed.
“Clock’s ticking,” Card said, blinking to keep the tears that had gathered in his eyes from falling. It made him seem deceptively sincere. “What do you think, Michael? Can we – Can we put all this behind us?”
Michael stared at him, frozen.
Did he really think it was that easy? Was the body that was lying on the floor between them just another bad guy? Another statistic or another means to an end? Was that all they ever were?
“Can we move into the future?” Card’s words were barely above a whisper.
As spies, they already lived in the world of greys, continuously toeing a blurry line that constantly changed whenever the definitions of the good and the bad, the right and the wrong wavered and stumbled. Card seemed to think that total disregard for what few rules they had that differentiated them from the bad guys, the enemy, was acceptable. Was the right thing to do, even. That it was perfectly fine and okay to make up your own rules and measurements of justice. That it was perfectly fine and okay to have no accountability for his decisions and actions whatsoever.
All Michael had to do was forget everything Card had done and agree to move on. To wipe the slate clean as if there was no blood on Card’s hands or Michael’s own by extension. To accept that all of the sacrifices meant nothing:
That his brother died for nothing.
That Gray lay between them bleeding from a hole in his chest for nothing.
That his friends had put their own lives on the line for him over and over for nothing.
That Michael lost the only family he had ever had for nothing.
That it was all just a part of a game Card had played, with Michael as his pawn and nothing more.
Maybe it was really that simple, Michael thought, marvelling at the sudden clarity in his mind after the rollercoaster of emotions that had been churning inside him.
There’s no one next after this… no one.
He had made a promise to his mother after all, and he intended to keep it.
Michael accepted what had to be done to end it all with a deep, calming breath. He lowered his gun to the ground slowly, and gave Card a sharp nod.
Card returned his gun back to his hip holster with a relieved sigh.
“I’m proud of you, son,” he declared with a smile that was almost genuine.
Michael’s body carried out the conclusion he had arrived at in his mind without any further input from him. His hand lifted up on its own accord while Michael watched numbly, and his index finger caressed the trigger without waiting for his permission. The shot was point blank and the bullet found a home between Card’s widened eyes, and his body fell back to the ground with a muted thud.
The sound of the gunshot reverberated inside the small room for what felt like an unnaturally long time.
Chapter 2
Hotel InterContinental
Miami
13:30 Hours
Dealing with catastrophic events was an integral part of the training for any intelligence operative. It usually prepared them to separate how they felt from what they needed to do in those moments. But, maintaining that separation became impossible if and when those circumstances turned out to be so extreme and personal. Then, even a seasoned operative would have the same response as everyone else: horror, disbelief, shock.
Michael stared at the two dead bodies at his feet, transfixed.
Gray was dead; with a bullet that had pierced his heart, and a gun that had been fired nestled in his hand. His lifeless body told the story exactly as Card had planned: The unstable asset had reacted violently just as Card predicted, and Card had been forced to defend himself.
Then there was Card, dead with a bullet lodged in his forehead, with his own gun safely back inside his holster, telling a story he had not planned: The burned operative who was not as dead as they thought, killed Card, not in self-defence, but in cold blood.
You wiped out the last batch, he had said, It’s just you and me now.
Well, now it was just Michael. And it was done now, for good this time.
“Jesus! What happened?”
Sam’s shocked yelling registered abstractedly, just another sensory layer adding meaning – a touch of cold, hard reality – to the sight of still bodies, pooling blood, and the sharp, coppery scent in the air.
“Mike, what’d you do?”
He sounded closer, right next to Michael’s shoulder in fact, taking in the scene with a sharp intake of breath.
“I did what I had to, Sam.” A stranger answered in a strained voice as Michael watched from somewhere cold and disconnected.
“Had to? How do you figure that?” A hand clamped around his shoulder and shook him roughly. “Card’s gun is in the damn holster.”
“He killed my brother, Sam.” Michael answered mechanically, his gaze still fixed on the dead, his mouth spitting out words he thought Sam wanted to hear. “He was going to get away with it. I had no choice.”
His back hit the wall then, hard, and Sam was suddenly in his face, glaring at him with a stormy look of accusation in his eyes. Michael blinked, wishing he could return to that dissociative state where he could feel nothing. It was difficult with his best friend pinning him to the wall with his considerable bulk, forcing him to acknowledge the reality.
“I was right outside that door, Mike,” Sam bit out, shaking him. “Why didn’t you come and get me before you made that call, huh? Because you knew damn well I would have had something to say about it!”
The ding of the elevator bell reached them then, announcing the impending arrival of the CIA teams. The indistinct chatter of the men soon followed. They were about to be trapped.
“Card’s team is coming.” Michael reminded him calmly. For the first time since he had knocked that damned door down, he knew what to do. His brain was finally back online and was already mapping out an exit strategy…for Sam.
“This isn’t finished–” Sam let go of him with a warning.
“You got to go.”
“What do you mean, I gotta go?” The ex-SEAL frowned. “We gotta go.”
Michael knew that stubborn look very well. It said that he would definitely get an earful from Sam later, but only after they had escaped and regrouped somewhere where they could sit down, take a breath and figure things out.
Only Michael had other plans, plans he knew Sam would never go along with if he knew. He was too goddamn loyal for his own good. Fiona and Jesse were no better. There was no reason for Michael to drag them into his own mess, not now, not anymore. He had to get them away from the building before the CIA teams arrested them all for aiding and abetting in his crimes.
“Well then,” he said, deciding to play along for the time being, “We need to go out through the balcony.”
Sam stepped away from his personal space then, accepting that they had to move quickly. Working together, they managed to move the heavy table to barricade the closed door. It wouldn’t hold anyone back for long, but it would buy them enough time to get to the next level without being seen.
“We’re gonna need help getting out of here, Mike.” Sam said as he followed him out through the balcony.
“I’ll call Fi,” Michael said, dialling the phone, “Let’s get up to the next floor, first.”
The call connected just as they climbed over to the room above from the balcony of the adjoining room.
“Michael.”
Michael opened the door quietly and took a look. The hallway was clear for the moment. He could hear the CIA team tearing the door down to Card’s room already from the floor below. “Fi, you outside?”
“Yeah, we’re here,” He could hear Fiona’s voice through his Bluetooth earpiece. She sounded worried. “You want to tell me what’s going on? Hotel security’s buzzing around like bees. And there is a CIA caravan rolling in… two SUVs and a command van. Michael, what happened?”
That was not good. They needed to move quickly unless they wanted to get trapped inside the rapidly closing net.
“Card’s dead,” he told her, feeling nothing but relief at the memory. He didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. “They’re coming for me.”
“What? Michael, why?”
Because I’m fucking tired of running and I needed to finish this.
“I can’t explain right now,” was all he said as he led Sam through the empty corridor towards the stairs. “Sam and I need a way out of here. We made it up to the ninth floor, but we don’t have much time.”
To her credit, she understood now was not the time to argue. Like Sam, he knew she would have a lot to say to him later. She just didn’t know he wasn’t going to give her the chance.
“Got it. I’ll call you back.”
The plan to take the stairs to the next floor had to be discarded. Michael saw two agents already there as he took a quick peek around the corner. One of them was updating the team through the comms while the other spoke to someone who looked like a guest.
They quietly ducked back inside the closest room to wait just as Fiona called back, “Fi, how are we looking?”
“Not good. There’s a full tactical support team on-site and some heavy hitter seems to be running the show.”
“Fi, I need a door. Give me one exit they haven’t covered.”
“There isn’t one. They got the whole place locked down. Michael, you’re trapped.”
***
Michael took a moment to go through his mental tradecraft guidebook on escaping a building that was being rapidly locked down. He knew in their situation, speed was key. There was a small amount of time when the different authorities present in the scene merged together to coordinate their efforts. Intelligence operatives were trained to take advantage of that window.
The only snag to that strategy, in their case, came in the shape of another trained intelligence operative, the one who was in charge of locking down the building and taking over the scene. The shared training and insight made sure that supposed window of opportunity would disappear before they could use it.
Michael heard the sound of sirens in the background, announcing the arrival of the local police into the mix. At best, he had minutes to get the rest of them out before all the roads leading out were closed with roadblocks, cutting off their escape routes entirely.
“What kind of control do they have on the east side, Fi?” Michael asked, watching the two agents outside through the mostly closed door, waiting for them to move.
“Complete.” She answered. It sounded like she was on the move by the way the surrounding sounds fluctuated around her. “Anyone who tries to leave isn’t getting past the lobby. There’s no way out.”
“Where’s the lead agent?”
“I saw her walking inside the lobby earlier,” Fiona said, “They’re probably setting up a command centre–”
Full access to all the security systems, elevators and the PA system, Michael thought, running a hand through his hair, the noose is getting tighter.
He moved back inside the room to look out through the balcony window. “They’re not guarding the second-floor access to the garage,” he reported. “If Sam and I can make our way down there, we should be able to get inside and find a way to the street.”
“It won’t work, Michael,” said Fiona, and Michael could hear the frustration in her voice. “They’re stopping every car that comes out. That woman works too damned fast.”
That much was obvious, Michael sighed. He just needed the CIA team lead and her teams distracted enough until he could get Sam, Fi and Jesse out. He also needed the three of them distracted enough that they wouldn’t realise what he was planning until it was too late for them to do anything about it.
He had to do all that before the minuscule possibility of an exit he had just observed closed for good.
“Okay,” he said, “I need you and Jesse to meet us on the north side alley.”
“But there’s no access–”
“Just get there,” Michael said before cutting the call. If all went according to plan, there would be a brand new exit by the time they were done.
“Well, I thought we were screwed seven ways from Sunday,” Sam announced from where he was keeping watch on the hallway just outside the room. “But you can go ahead and make it eight and nine. They got a guard on every floor and they’re recruiting hotel employees to help lock it down. It’s not just the guards. They got cameras outside the elevators on every floor.”
Michael joined him and peered through the opening. Sure enough, there was a hotel security guard talking to everyone he saw on the hallway, recruiting the other hotel staff on the spot to join the manhunt.
Michael needed to get Sam to the garage and through the second floor access before the agents saw Sam tagging along with him. “If I can take out the guard–”
“Okay, whoa. Whoa!” Sam interrupted before Michael could finish, pinning him with a look he usually reserved to stare down scumbags…the same glare he had already used on Michael back at the room downstairs when he had first seen Card’s dead body.
It hurt to be on the receiving end of it, again. “I’m not gonna kill him, Sam.” Michael said calmly, doing his best not to show it.
“You sure about that, Mike?” Sam glowered, pulling no punches, “Because last time I let you out of my sight–”
They didn’t have time to get into it. “I can get us out of here,” he said bluntly, cutting Sam off, “You can either kick my ass or you can hear my plan. But you can’t do both.”
Sam gave in with a frustrated sigh. “All right. Let’s hear it.”
At that exact moment, an announcement over the Public Address system started to repeat itself in a loop.
“Attention, valued guests. We are experiencing an emergency. Please go back to your rooms immediately and await further instructions.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Michael said as the hotel guests started to respond to the instructions. The moving foot traffic was going to give them both enough cover to do what needed to be done. “I’m going to knock the guard out. I’ll make sure to do it in front of the camera so it’ll draw the attention of the agents. While I do that, you set up shop above the elevator car. They’ll have to use it to take the guard down to get him to the lobby. When they do that, you’ll be in the position to get out on the floor above and make it to the garage.”
“Yeah, okay,” said Sam, frowning doubtfully, “So while I’m pulling my Mission Impossible stunt, what will you be doing?”
“I’m going to take the stairs.” Michael lied with a straight face.
“It’s guarded–”
“I know,” said Michael, not wanting to let Sam come to the conclusion he shouldn’t. At least, not yet. “They are checking all the cars that are coming out of the parking lot. So when you make it there, find an older model with a large body and create your own, preferably loud exit on the north. Fi and Jesse will be waiting for you there with her car. That should be enough of a distraction for me to slip out through the exit and find my own way out.”
Michael knew that Sam understood exactly what he was saying. He was going to have to drive through a wall to get out, creating enough of a commotion that would draw the attention of almost everyone down around the garage.
Still, it didn’t guarantee a clean escape for Michael, not by a long shot. Michael knew that, and wasn’t really worried about it since he had no intention of running this time. He just didn’t want Sam to realise that just yet.
“Mike, I don’t–”
“We don’t have time to argue finer points of the plan, Sam,” he said forcibly, letting the urgency of the situation seep into his tone. “You have to get moving.”
Sam nodded once, accepting his reasoning. “We’re going to talk about this,” he said, narrowing his eyes.
“I know, I know,” Michael said, giving him a little push towards the elevator. Sam had a little time before he could get into position before he was sighted. “I’m looking forward to it, believe me. Now go.”
***
Once a location got completely locked down, the only thing hiding delayed was capture. While capture, or surrender, was the ultimate conclusion of the plan, Michael still needed to generate enough action to keep the security off-balance and on the move, so Sam could make his getaway. The only way to create that kind of response was to come right out in the open.
Michael slowly, and carefully advanced on the older man wearing the red hotel uniform jacket. The carpeted floor muted his footsteps enough so that the guard never heard his approach.
“Norm,” a voice came through the guard’s radio after a short burst of static, “What’s taking so long? I need you down on the mezzanine level.”
“I got six floors to cover,” Norm said, “I’m moving as fast as I can.”
“Where’s the ice machine?” Michael called out, lifting the empty bucket he had in his hand up with a smile, finally letting his presence in the otherwise isolated corridor be known.
Norm whirled around, surprised by Michael’s sudden appearance.“Sir, you need to go back to your room–”
Michael threw the bucket at him, distracting Norm with the flying projectile that flew towards his face. It was more than enough for him to get under Norm’s guard and haul him in against his chest in a solid chokehold. Norm grunted and struggled.
“Relax, just relax,” Michael murmured to the old man as he kept hauling him back through the hallway towards the stairs, making it look like he was about to make a run for it. He knew by now the CIA team lead had seen his face through the camera from where he had grabbed Norm.
Ten seconds later, Norm went limp in his arms. Micahel slowly lowered the guard to the floor next to the stairwell and moved quickly to the supply closet two doors down. He had scouted the location earlier to serve as his hiding spot. He only needed to be there until the agents found Norm and took him down to the lobby to get him to medical, which was the opening Sam, who should be camping above the elevator car by now, needed.
Soon enough, he heard the sounds of running footsteps, followed by urgent voices.
“Hey, I got something,” the gruff voice said, “A hotel guard. Name tag says he’s Norman.”
“Westen must have gone down the stairs,” another deeper voice piped up, coming to the conclusion Michael had hoped. “You, with me,” the same voice said, presumably dividing his team to go separate ways. “You, take him down to the ground floor.”
Before long, Michael heard the telltale sound of the elevator moving, taking Sam with it towards his escape route. He inhaled the crisp scent of the freshly laundered linen surrounding him in neatly folded stacks, willing his racing heart to calm down a little. He just had to hold on for a few more minutes, until Sam cleared the building.
Then would come the hard part. Or maybe, it would be the easy part.
He heard the unmistakable sounds of the screeching tires not long after, letting him know that his best friend was making his move. If Michael timed it right, Fiona, Jesse and Sam would be long gone by the time he introduced himself to the CIA team lead.
“Good luck, Sam.” He murmured, waiting for Fiona’s call.
The call came through almost as soon as the loud, reverberating sound of a collapsing wall reached him.
“Michael, we got Sam,” she said, and he heard the sounds of car doors slamming in the background. “He came through the wall just now.”
Michael smiled. His risky plan seemed to have worked. “Is he okay?”
“Well, he’s bitching about it, so yeah, he is,” Fiona snapped, and sure enough, Michael could hear Sam’s voice through the earpiece, words unintelligible but the massively irritated tone unmistakable. “Where are you?”
“Get moving before the team catches up to you.” Michael said instead of answering her question.
“We’re moving,” she said as the sounds around her blended with the rushing wind, which told him that her car was gaining speed. “Where are we picking you up? Or are you going to make your own way to the emergency spot?”
Maybe, this was the hardest part. Saying goodbye.
Michael took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’m not coming, Fi.”
There was a long pause before her incredulous tone broke through the ambient noise. “Wait, I’m sorry. I thought you said you’re not coming!”
“I did,” he murmured, trying to picture her expression in his mind’s eye. “I’m handing myself in.”
“What!?”
“Fi, I killed Card,” he continued, keeping his voice soft. He still had a hard time summoning up any sort of guilt or self-recrimination over the fact. All he felt was bone-weary exhaustion, and a slowly impending sense of… peace? “I murdered him in cold blood. Pure and simple.” Except it really wasn’t, was it? But he didn’t have time to explain all of it to her, not right then. “I’m not running. There’s no point.”
“What’s happening, Fi?” That was Sam, who had definitely heard what was happening.
“Can someone talk some sense into Michael, please?” Fi yelled angrily, putting the call on speaker. “He’s lost his goddamn mind. He’s planning to hand himself in.”
That went down about as expected.
“Brother, what?”
“Michael, listen man,” Jesse’s voice cut in through Fiona’s furious snarls and Sam’s loud protests, “They’re gonna haul you in, drop you in some dark hole and forget about you. And that’s the scenario if you’re lucky. If not, well… fucking hell man, you know what I’m getting at–”
“I know,” said Michael.
He was an asset, or used to be one. After turning himself in, he would be labelled a disgrace, a liability, and a criminal. Yet, all of that wouldn’t change the fact that they could still use him as a different sort of an asset. The CIA never threw away their trained operatives to the wind, not even when they were damaged and out of control. Michael was certain some enterprising soul would find some use for him in ways that would never make it into the records… uses that never ended well for the deniable, disposable assets.
As Jesse pointed out, getting a trial and a lifelong sentence in a high security prison somewhere would be the best case scenario for him after he turned himself in.
“Jesus! Can we talk about this?” Sam yelled. “Get the hell out, Mike!”
“I can’t,” Michael snapped, getting tired. “I won’t. I just wanted to get you out of the building before I made my move so that you wouldn’t get hauled in with me as an accomplice. Once they have me, they’ll take the roadblocks out and you all should be in the clear.”
“Mike, there’s got to be another way-”
“To do what, Sam? Live the rest of my life on the run? There’s no other choice, not this time.” He had done the crime, and all that was left now was doing the time.
“Michael, where is this going to take you, huh? What does this solve?” It was Fiona again, and she still sounded very much angry.
“Nothing,” Michael sighed. “There’s nothing to solve, Fi, it’s done. I’m done.”
“Michael, you made a promise to me back in Panama. After the business of Gray and Card was over, you were going to get out of the CIA for good. You said you meant it.”
“I did, Fi, I wanted that more than anything…”
That had been the pure, unvarnished truth, spoken quietly in some junk yard in a forgotten corner in Panama. For the first time in a long while, Michael had started feeling as if he could finally leave it all behind and just be with the woman he loved. It had been a strange feeling, to actually look forward to leaving the one thing he had thought defined him, behind. The realisation had been liberating.
But, now… Now, all of those plans were gone.
“That was before I murdered Card–”
“Why the hell did you do that?” Her words had a watery quality to them and Michael hated himself for making her sound so broken.
Yet, it was for the best.
“Because we never could have prosecuted him,” he said, willing all of them to understand. “Card had it all covered. All I had waiting for me in there was another goddamn leash around my neck for him to haul me around and make me do his goddamn bidding.” He had seen it in the calculating look behind those false tears. Tom Card had been Anson’s partner, and Michael knew if he had taken the deal, he would have ended up in Card’s clutches till the bitter end, or as dead as Gray then and there. “This was never going to end, Fi, never. I couldn’t let that happen, not again. I’m done losing my friends and my family to something that had already lost all its meaning.”
Michael had no idea how many others were in there infecting the institution he had once believed stood for something good, something worthwhile. It operated in the dark, shadowy corners of the world where no one else wanted to dwell, doing things no one else wanted to do or could do. The CIA he thought he knew stood for what was right, to protect and safeguard what needed to be saved and protected. Now, everywhere he looked, it seemed as if the agency was full of traitors who did what they wanted, what they thought was right and said to hell with the consequences.
Good people got killed or transferred out of the picture when they tried to do something about it.
Honestly, Michael was just too damned tired to care anymore about any of it.
“Mike–”
“I’m going to make sure none of this blows back on any of you,” he said, cutting off whatever Sam was trying to say. “Just make sure my Mom gets to aunt Jill’s safely. She lives in Louisiana by the way, and Ma’s going to settle there permanently.”
Which was for the best, he thought. At least, she could have her new beginning without having to constantly worry about his life. She had asked him to start over. Ending it all once and for all was the best he could offer. Maybe, she would take some comfort in the fact that Nate’s killer had gotten what he deserved.
There were no more monsters.
“Michael–”
“I’ve gotta go now,” Michael interrupted, since there was no point arguing further. “Take care, all of you. Fi, I love you. Goodbye.”
“Michael, you basta–”
He cut the call before the rest of her cursing reached him.
***
Walking to the lobby crowded with armed agents, security guards and the loud, opinionated tourists who thought they knew better was a surreal experience. Michael spotted the tall, dark woman in a purple shirt and a sharp grey suit right away. She was standing inside the hotel security office by the reception which she had turned into her temporary command centre. She had her back to him, so Michael couldn’t see her face, but it was obvious to him that she was well in control of the situation, despite being surrounded by a bunch of disgruntled guests, hotel staff, and the newly joined police unit leaders.
Judging by the speed of the preparations of her team, Michael could easily guess that she was organising a complete city-wide shut down, followed by a swift manhunt. Her posture and the tightly-wound energy about her suggested that she was planning to enjoy the thrill of the chase.
Too bad all of that work was going to be a waste of time and effort, Michael sighed as he took the main stairs down one at a time at a slow, measured pace.
For the first time in a long time, he was walking into a volatile situation of his own making, with no script to stick to or no last desperate act to sell. It took effort to quiet the ‘trained-spy manual’ of his brain that always actively searched for a weakness to exploit in order to get the hell out.
There were no more acts left, or lies or deals. There was just him and the facts. There was no plan other than to lay them in front of the agent and let her decide his fate. It made him feel more like a human – a guilty, fragile one – rather than a spy.
They noticed him the moment he climbed down the last step.
“Hey! That’s him!” The closest agent was about ten feet away from Michael to his left. The man brought up his assault rifle to bear on Michael with a surprised shout, drawing everyone’s excited attention. “Michael Westen!”
A chorus of screams erupted, ordering him to drop his weapon, get down on his knees and put his hands behind his head. Michael complied with all the shouted commands placidly, not wanting to make a scene, or get an over-eager, trigger-happy agent to let loose a round with all the civilians still surrounding them.
Two of them descended on him the moment his knees hit the carpeted floor in the middle of the lobby. One carefully picked up the pistol he placed on the floor and kept a CA-415 aimed at his torso while the other pushed him flat on the ground face first. He was then roughly, and efficiently patted down for more hidden weapons he may have forgotten to declare. A few flashes went off, coupled with the sounds of the cameras clicking, before another pair of agents herded the rubbernecking crowd out of the way. As the first agent did a thorough job of zip tying his hands behind his back, Michael wondered idly how many of the aspiring photographers would go viral in their social media pages that night for having caught the best angles of a real-life take down of an armed and dangerous criminal.
When he was hauled back to his knees, he was greeted by the CIA team lead with her hands planted on her hips like an irritated mother about to scold an unruly child. It was then Michael realised that he actually knew her.
“I’ll be damned.” They both muttered at the same time.
“Olivia Riley, if I’m not mistaken.” Michael said first with his best charming smile.
He had heard a lot about her, especially in the counterintelligence circles where she had a legendary reputation. She was rumoured to have written about half the case-studies used in training, and was famous as someone who knew how to ‘hit where it hurt.’
“You’re not mistaken,” Riley let out an unfriendly chuckle. “You know, I’ve heard a lot about you, Westen.”
Michael blinked innocently at her just for the hell of it. “Blatant lies, I’m sure.”
“This is not how I envisioned finally meeting the burned legend of the CIA.”
“The ‘Burned Legend,’ that’s me.”
“So, how do you want to do this, Westen?” She narrowed her eyes. “Now that you’ve robbed me of the pleasure of hunting you down like a dog.”
No nonsense and straight to business. Michael could work with that. “I’m sure you have discovered the bodies already,” he said calmly. “Tom Card killed Tyler Gray and I shot Card. This is me handing myself over to you after the fact.”
“Tyler Gray died because he was trying to kill Card,’ Riley pointed out, letting Michael know that she had already seen the lounge floor littered with the bodies, possibly in the security feeds, “but Card’s death–”
“I know what the crime scene looks like Riley,” he interjected, “I was there when he arranged it.”
“How about your friends?” She glared at him again, completely ignoring his insinuation, “Especially the one who just made a spectacular exit out of the garage?”
“My friends have nothing to do with any of this,” Michael said levelly, “Now, if your people are done searching and restraining me, you can have my full confession at the detention centre–” he looked around pointedly at everyone who were still watching the drama unfolding before them, “Preferably without the peanut gallery.”
“Listen, Westen, this is my show,” Riley bared her teeth at him. “You’ll answer my damned questions and keep your opinions to yourself, got it?”
Michael flashed her another smile, one that he knew would get under her skin. “I’ll answer all your questions during my formal interview, with a panel of representatives there to conduct the proceedings. Until such time, I have nothing else to say to you.”
They glared at each other for a full minute, neither willing to back down. Finally, Riley realised that she really had no other play left. She already had her perpetrator, confessed and surrendered. All that was left for her to do was hand over the crime scene to the local police and get him to the nearest CIA field office for further questioning.
With a scoff, she turned away from him and started barking orders. The frustrated police units were finally free to go upstairs to secure the area and start processing the crime scene. The tall, bald, muscular man in the red jacket, whom Michael thought was the head of hotel security, heaved a sigh of relief when the CIA tech unplugged his equipment and gave him back control of the feeds. After allocating an investigative team to stay behind and follow the police investigation, the senior CIA agent finally turned to the agent who still had a heavy hand on Michael’s shoulder to keep him from moving anywhere.
“Get him in the van,” she said, nodding disgustedly at Michael. “We’re done here.”
Chapter 3
The Westen Residence
South Miami
A few hours later…
“Eddie, man,” Sam Axe interrupted the tirade of his friend before he could get into it. He had no time to listen to the man’s complaints just then. “I just need a location, that’s all–”
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not know?” He snapped back in frustration. This was the third call he had made during the last hour. He was getting tired of how everyone suddenly seemed to know absolutely nothing about anything. “Your precinct is handling the case–”
“Listen, Sam, I told you already,” the detective on the line muttered with a sigh that sounded like a small gale trapped inside the phone. “Everything – the evidence, witness accounts, lab work – all of it goes through the bunch of suits the dragon lady left behind. And they are keeping it all under tight wraps. I don’t have to tell you how messy it is when there are too many alphabet soup agencies involved. I can get into trouble just by taking your call.”
“But Eddie–”
“All I can say is they are not looking into the rest of you yet. So my advice is to lay low until the heat dies down and then get on with your lives. Your friend is gone. Do yourselves a favour and move on. Also, don’t call me again.”
“Eddie…Eddie–” It took him a moment to realise that the call had already been cut from the other side.
“That face says it didn’t go well,” Jesse commented from where he was seated by the dining table. They were all at Madeline’s since there had been no need to regroup at the emergency spot as they had planned earlier.
Fiona sat next to Jesse, disassembling and reassembling her handgun for what looked like the tenth time. Her movements were short and erratic, her simmering fury seeping into the ritual that should have been calming and centering. Jesse, he noted, had wisely moved all the bullets away from her grasp, and it spoke of her own emotional turmoil that she hadn’t noticed the fact.
Sam took a sip of his lukewarm beer and grimaced. It tasted vile. Somewhere between the calls he had been making, the beverage had gone flat. He chucked it in the bin and leaned against the kitchen counter with a despondent sigh.
“My buddy can’t say anything other than we’re in the clear for the moment,” he reported his latest worthless update. “I guess Mike kept his word.”
I’m going to make sure none of this blows back on any of you, he had said.
“Where is he?” Fiona asked, her attention fixed on the sliding hammer.
“Nobody in the station knows,” Sam muttered before plucking another cold one out of Madeline’s fridge. “Jesse, any luck?”
The former counterintelligence agent had been making his own inquiries. But the less-than-pleased expression in his face said all Sam needed to know before he even opened his mouth.
“They took him to the local FAA building at first,” the man said quietly, “But transferred him out within the hour. No clue about where they went from there.”
The Federal Aviation Administration building located at 58th street, Miami Dade county, had several corner offices on the 12th floor where they did nothing related to the sign on the board. It was not the only one. Most government offices everywhere around the country had such offices, which they usually kept reserved for the agencies that couldn’t really put up a plaque advertising what they did. Those intelligence agencies most of the time had to strike a delicate balance between blending in with the rest while they handled their classified operations. Piggybacking on other more frontline agencies and their security was the easiest and most efficient way to go about it.
That was all they had. The CIA field office was where the trail ended before Michael seemed to have vanished without a trace.
Meanwhile, on the television, the story of Michael’s arrest was the main focus on Prime Time News.
“…the take down at hotel Intercontinental this afternoon…” the news host carried on gravely. “Although the identity of the perpetrator has not been disclosed by the authorities yet, we do have some footage of the incident we have received from our viewers…”
The footage of Michael walking down to the lobby and his subsequent arrest played in a continuous loop in the background. It wasn’t a professional video by any means, but a series of clips from multiple sources that had been hastily strung together into a sequence.
Sam took a sip of his fresh beer just as one of the CIA goons wrenched Michael back to a kneeling position once his hands were tied securely behind his back. Even on the wobbly, low quality video, the insolent smirk the man flashed at the senior agent on the scene was quite obvious. They now knew the woman as Olivia Riley.
The cold brew tasted like sewage water and burned Sam’s throat on the way down. He glared at the bottle, irritated, trying to figure out what kind of a curse had befallen Miami’s beer supply to make them all go so bad all of a sudden.
“Sam, you were there,” Madeline said softly, finally turning her attention away from the muted TV screen to him, “What happened?”
“Maddie–”
His bid to slink away from a potentially hard conversation was shot down before he could even begin framing the response.
“Spare me the bullshit and give it to me straight, Sam,” Michael’s mother, whom he was sure had invented the highly effective ‘Westen Glare,’ used it on him like a blue-eyed laser with full power. “And, for the love of God, stop throwing away my damned beer.”
He wanted to protest. The beer was not good. Something was terribly wrong with all of it. But it was her house, so she had the final say in it. Sam placed the useless brew on the counter and walked out of the kitchen to find a seat next to Jesse. It was a strategic choice. Fiona’s empty gun could still be turned into a projectile weapon, and Madeline… Well, he knew he would never see her attack coming if or when she decided on one.
“Yeah, Sam, what the hell happened?” Fiona rounded on him with a narrow-eyed glare of her own, finally breaking her unnatural silence. “You never gave us the details.”
“Alright, fine,” he sighed. “I’ll tell you what happened. When we went in, the door to Card’s suite was closed. Mike wanted me to keep a lookout while he knocked the door down and confronted Card. I never heard what they were saying, and only ran in when I heard Mike’s gun going off–” he closed his eyes then, trying to banish the image of Michael and the lost look in his eyes he had seen, “I found him kinda frozen, staring down at two bodies on the floor.”
“Then what?” Jesse prompted him.
“It was not good,” Sam grunted. “Tyler had a gun in his hand. There were two bullet holes on the wall and Card had his own inside the holster. Mike had his in his hand. You see where I’m going with this?”
“Michael broke in while Card and Gray tried to kill each other and Card was quicker?” Jesse took a guess and then shook his head, frowning. “Hmm, that doesn’t sound right, man. At point blank range? Nah, Gray wouldn’t have missed.”
“Yeah. no. He wouldn’t have,” Sam said, agreeing with him. “According to what Mike told me later, in between all the running and hiding, Card shot Tyler and made it look like Tyler drew on him. The shots from his gun were fired by Card himself. I never heard it because the gun was suppressed.”
“He did all that while Michael just…watched?” Fiona burst out, glaring at him incredulously.
“I don’t know what happened!” Sam snarled back, angry at her, at himself, at Michael, at the shit beer…the even shittier world. “He looked like he was in shock when I found him. He never told me why he shot Card after he put the damned gun away!”
“He did though, didn’t he?” Jesse pointed out quietly. “While we were in the car, he said something about another leash… something along the lines of Card having it all figured out and having things in place to force Mike into continuing his dirty work–”
Fiona scoffed and started dismantling the Beretta with a renewed vigour. “Like that explained anything.”
“What aren’t you saying, Sam?” Madeline’s quiet voice held a warning. Damn the woman and her intuition!
“I couldn’t believe he had killed a man in cold blood,” Sam admitted quietly, trying not to let the guilt add to the frustration he was already feeling. He failed. “That’s just not the Mike I know. It was a shock to me too. So, I kinda reacted in a way maybe I wouldn’t have, otherwise. Said things I shouldn’t have…things I now feel kinda sorta bad about.”
“Don’t we all…”
Maddie’s words were so quiet, he almost didn’t hear them. He remembered then how anxious Michael had seemed when he showed up for the surveillance. Sam knew he had gone to see Maddie. He wondered what things she had said to him to make him that upset; things now she also seemed to be wishing she could take back.
“I’m sure he thought he was doing the right thing, just like you did when you handed yourself in after blowing up that despicable man,” she said to Fiona after a moment.
“But that was different, Madeline.”
“How?”
“While it was Anson’s interference that killed those two innocent guards, I planted my explosives that day to take Larry out,” Fiona said, looking like she wanted to blow up the bastard’s grave for good measure. “He was blackmailing Michael, and we all thought he was going to kill him. I felt no guilt about killing that man, and I’d do it again if I had to. I handed myself in only because Anson was using that to keep Michael doing his bidding. I had to free him from that man so he could go after him. But, what he did today…”
“You think Card was trying to do the same?” Jesse asked, glancing around a little desperately, trying to put meaning to Michael’s unexpected actions. “He was the one who had Anson killed after all. Maybe he had plans to branch out Anson’s enterprise.”
“I can’t wrap my head around the fact that he just gave up…” Fiona shook her head, unwilling to forgive Michael for what he did.
“You know, Tom Card said something to me the other day–”
Sam jerked back in his seat. Did he hear that right? “You met him?” He glared at the older woman, “When? Why? How?”
“Not important,” she said, releasing a plume of Morleys’ smoke. “I wanted to speak to him about Nate…and Michael. I asked him how they both turned out so different, despite growing up in the same house with the same set of problems. I think he told me the truth, the way he saw it at least.”
‘Madeline, you know you can’t trust anything that man–”
“He told me to imagine dropping two bottles on the floor and breaking them. He told me the way they broke was important. He said that while one bottle could crumple into a pile of glass, the other could shatter into a jagged-edged weapon…”
Her voice went low and the look in her eyes grew distant. Sam knew she was thinking about Nate, and the less-than-stellar childhood both boys had shared.
“Anyway, the point was, in the exact same situation, when two people broke, they never broke the same,” Madeline continued, sounding as if she was trying to convince herself rather than anything else. “And I guess the same can be said about the same man breaking in different ways in different situations.”
Sam could see where she was going with it. Card, the traitorous bastard that he was, had made her see a point she hadn’t really considered before.
“Maybe whatever happened with this man today, a man who Michael admired a lot, treated like a mentor, broke him in a way that he couldn’t come back from,” she let out a weary sigh before turning to him, “You said so yourself, Sam, what you found in that room was not the Michael you knew, not anymore.”
Sam didn’t like the defeated, borderline fatalistic tone underlying her soft words, not one bit.
“Maddie, no,” he said, resolutely, “Mike isn’t – he’s not… he hasn’t given up, not by a long shot.” He had to believe that. He just had to. It was much better than the direction Maddie’s thoughts seemed to have taken. “We are going to figure this out, one way another.”
“I’m all for Sam’s plan,” Jesse said, breaking the unsettling silence that followed. “But, look guys, this is getting us nowhere. Maybe let’s just wrap up for the night and come back at this in the morning, when all of us have gotten some sleep and are firing on all cylinders, yeah?”
He received a round of despondent nods, Sam’s included. The man had a point. They weren’t doing anyone any favours sitting there, trying to figure out a ‘spy brain’ that functioned in the most ridiculously complicated ways in the best of days.
“Maddie, I can drive you to the airport,” Jesse continued, glancing at his wristwatch. “We have to leave within the hour if you want to catch that flight of yours.”
Sam hung his head. Mike had asked them to make sure she got to her sister’s place safely, after all. He had completely forgotten.
“Jesse, thank you, but don’t worry about it,” Madeline said. “I called Jill already, and cancelled my ticket. I’m not going anywhere just yet, not until you three figure out what is going to happen to my son.”
“Fair enough.” Jesse heaved a relieved breath. Sam could relate.
“Madeline, can I crash here?” Fiona asked, letting out a loud yawn and stretching like a jungle cat. “I’m in the mood to shoot someone or blow something up. Which is not the best mindset to sit behind a wheel, if I’m honest.”
“Of course.’
“Wow,” Sam said, grinning half-heartedly, unable and unwilling to let the chance to take such an easy dig at her pass through his fingers. “That’s very mature of you.”
It spoke to her exhaustion and worry when she flipped him off without a biting retort.
“Give me a ride to Elsa’s?” Sam asked, following suit when the younger man got up to take his leave.
“Sure, man.”
They had a long day waiting for them when the sun rose again, Sam sighed, closing the door quietly behind him as he left Michael’s home. The worrying thing was that they had no plan of attack to tackle all the troubles it would bring with it.
Undisclosed Location
Meanwhile
An interrogation typically began with deprivation and discomfort. That meant the thermostat cranked all the way up, uncomfortable furniture, dim lights that strain the eyes and if there was food, not much of it. It was all about making sure the subject was exhausted and vulnerable before the interrogator even set foot in the door.
That tried-and-true process of conditioning started the moment Michael put himself under Olivia Riley’s mercy.
The journey from the hotel to the CIA field office in Miami – the small office located in a restricted access area of the FAA – had been short, as had the quick and efficient processing under Riley’s hawk-like glare. Michael had been stripped of all his personal belongings, his phone, earpiece, clothes and shoes. Then he had been given a set of grey, prison scrubs and canvas slip-ons to put on after a quite thorough full-body search. The process had been a bit harsh and over the top even for an uptight bloodhound like Riley, in Michael’s personal opinion, but he had borne the treatment without a complaint.
Things had gotten a little murky after that. He had noticed Riley excusing herself to answer a call in private. She had returned after fifteen minutes with an expression blank enough that Michael had known it spelled trouble. His suspicion had been confirmed when instead of handling his arrest report and initial interview then and there, Riley wordlessly bundled him off to another tinted SUV with a curt, highly uninformative, “See you later, Westen.”
The ride had taken what felt like a couple of lifetimes. Michael had absolutely no idea where he was being taken. He had understood the subtly employed tactics. The isolation and disorientation were meant to weaken his mental resolve and have him in a fragile state when the actual questioning happened. Understanding that hadn’t really been much of a help to resist the effectiveness of it, however.
By the time Michael found himself seated in a steel chair bolted to the floor, with his cuffed hands secured to a metal bar attached to the steel, equally bolted table before him, he was beyond exhausted. He was more than ready to say or do anything just to get them to stick him in a cell so he could finally get some sleep.
That was exactly the state they wanted him.
There was not one, but eight of them, including Olivia Riley. She had earned herself the invite on the virtue of being his Arresting Officer. Five of them identified themselves as senior agents, whose names promptly got lost somewhere in the muggy cloud that had wrapped itself around Michael’s mind. The other two were regional directors thrown into the mix to liven up the panel.
It was not the formal interview Michael had hoped for, with someone sitting on his side to at least pretend to have his best interests at heart. No. For all intents and purposes, it was a one-sided trial, and the eight people who sat behind the long, wooden table facing Michael were the judge, jury and executioner of his fate.
“State your full name for the record.” The bald one, the one that seemed to be the lead interrogator, said in a monotone.
Michael leaned in towards the microphone which was set up before him and did as he was told. “Michael Allen Westen.”
“Age.”
“Forty-two.”
“Employment status.”
He had to take a moment to think about that. Five years ago, the answer would have been simple; he was an active operative. But that was before the burn notice sent everything to hell. Then he was a freelance spy who did whatever work that came his way in order to stay alive, sane and out of the streets. He had initially believed that being out of work, discarded and forgotten by his own people, had been the worst thing that could have ever happened to him.
Funnily enough, looking back, those years didn’t seem that bad at all. He had, in fact, enjoyed using his rather unique skillset to help regular people.
Then of course, he had taken down The Organization, the rogue cabal within the United States government and various other positions of power. It was a professional black operations syndicate, their assets including, and not limited to, private armies and operatives stationed throughout the globe. That hadn’t been enough for the agency to lift the burn notice officially, but it had been enough for Michael to gain an ‘unofficial asset’ status. Yet, it had been a step in the right direction to clearing up his name and becoming an official operative again.
Now, after what he had done today, Michael was right back to where he had started, or quite possibly, in a situation even worse.
“Mr. Westen?”
The agent’s voice snapped him back from his spiralling thoughts.
“Unemployed.” He replied.
The preliminaries designed to verify that Michael was mentally sound to proceed with the questioning taken care of, the agent turned his head and nodded minutely at the agent to his immediate left.
“As you know, we’re here for your official debrief on the murders of Senior Agent Tom Card and the ex-marine sniper Tyler Gray,” the blond man with a deep, gruff voice said. “You will answer all the questions truthfully and to the best of your ability, leaving nothing behind. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
The CIA had its own set of egregious issues, but it never looked kindly at murder, especially when it was one of its own, well-respected senior agents. Only Michael knew exactly what kind of a monster lay beneath the well-crafted persona. And knowing Card, Michael knew the chances were next to nothing that he had left anything incriminating about his involvement with the Organization or Anson behind.
Michael had no delusions about being able to talk his way into justifying his act of swift judgement. With Gray gone, he had no evidence of Card’s treasonous activities. It was just going to be his words describing his actions – actions Michael had committed based on Card’s last words, the insincerity and cold calculation he had glimpsed in his eyes, the ruthlessness the man had displayed when it came to covering his tracks, and the way he had tried cajoling Michael into giving up everything he had ever believed in.
Card had counted on Michael’s own need for validation, and his deeply ingrained need to do the ‘right thing,’ to convince him into following him. He had thought Michael would turn a blind eye to his dangerous, self-serving ideals. Had thought that Michael would agree to go down the path paved by destruction that only served Card’s own purposes.
Card had thought Michael would join him, just because he had been willing to work with Gray, the very man who had shot and killed his brother. He had assumed that Michael would forgive him for Nate’s death, discard the incident as an unfortunate collateral damage, forget about it and move on.
That Michael would break yet another promise to his mother.
How wrong had he been. Michael hadn’t even given Card time to feel surprised by his grievous miscalculation, his fatal error.
Michael knew he had no way of proving any of that. Strangely enough, it didn’t really worry him as much as it should have. He had absolutely no regrets.
“We’ll start with Tyler Gray. Tell us all about how you became acquainted with him, from the beginning.”
“I backtracked the shot that killed my brother – the gun it came from led me to a private security company that hired his services from time to time–”
“Left out a few details there, didn’t you?” One of the directors interrupted with a scoff. “Such as stalking and pulling a gun on an FBI agent and then making a deal to pull the sealed file of Nathaniel Westen’s investigation. And let’s not forget orchestrating an illegal blackmail attempt that permanently damaged the government’s relationship with an important defence contractor, the same incident which got one of our best agents transferred permanently to some backwater country because she crossed a line for you.”
“You mean the same investigation that was closed and sealed due to the orders that came from Tom Card?” Michael asked offhandedly, observing the man for his reaction, “That investigation?”
It was a shot in the dark. Michael didn’t know if that was the case, but his tired brain had decided to throw the dice and see where it landed. Judging by the frown the director was not quite quick enough to hide, Michael figured he had guessed that one right.
“Name of the private security company, Westen,” the blond asshole snapped, bringing the questioning back on track, “We need all the details for the record. That’s what leaving nothing behind means.”
“Pryon,” Michael said, shuffling in his seat. The rattling of his chains was amplified by the microphone to painful levels, causing his interrogators to wince and flinch back. “It’s called The Pryon Group.”
“Did you make contact with this group?”
“Yes.”
“Then what happened?”
“I made certain inquiries with the company,” he went on, trying and failing to purge the memory of yet another unsuspecting victim of Gray’s, and by extension, Card’s. “Gray learned that I was looking into his activities. He shot the CEO of the company, Jack Vale, when I was meeting with him at a restaurant.”
“How did you find Tyler Gray’s location?”
“I didn’t,” said Michael. “Card found him for me. He sent me and my associates to Panama to bring him in. We made contact with another agent, Brady Pressman, who was supposed to be our field contact.” He had to admit that Sam, Fiona and Jesse had been with him on his trip to Panama. Even the off-the-books missions had certain records and trails that couldn’t just be erased.
“Describe what happened in Panama, from the moment you arrived in the country until you left.”
Michael did as he was told. He told them about the veritable army Gray had hired to take them out the very next day, their escape, and the subsequent plan they had executed to capture the sniper. He told them how he reported his mission success to Card and how Grey revealed he had been working for the same man. He told them how Card had tracked his location through the call and sent an F-18 fighter jet to take them out. He told them how Brady sacrificed himself to facilitate their escape.
Throughout the long, exhausting recount, Michael made sure to keep the details of his friends’ involvement to a minimum. Since there were no written mission reports or records, he had room to tell the story with a few minor changes.
“So, by the time you managed to steal the drug trafficker’s plane, for the second time, Gray had done a complete mental one-eighty and had agreed to help you expose Tom Card’s alleged actions,” this time it was Riley who snorted, shaking her head. “Is that it? Is that what we’re supposed to believe?”
“Hey, going through torture together does things to people,” Michael said with forced charm, “Even the trained ex-special forces soldiers. We came to an understanding.”
The clock kept ticking and questions kept coming. He had no idea how long it had been. He had a suspicion that, while the SUV had been taking him around the country in circles, Riley had made it to wherever this was in a leisurely manner and had probably had time to enjoy a shower, a meal and a fresh change of clothes. The rest of the panel all looked as if their workday had only just started.
Michael, however, was feeling the toll the day had taken down to his bones. His body had started to tremble hours ago from exhaustion, and his eyes continued to burn. The last time he had eaten anything was more than fifteen hours ago, if his mental clock was accurate. The single bottle of water he had finished in about three long swallows had been given to him before the long ride. Now, the constant talking was pure hell on his parched throat.
It was all part of the conditioning, he knew that. He stubbornly refused to give any of them the satisfaction of seeing him falter in the face of it. So he gritted his teeth and kept an unconcerned smirk on his lips, determined to get through this farce of an interrogation to its bitter conclusion.
“So you returned to Miami with Gray. How did you proceed with this plan of yours to obtain Tom Card’s admission of these allegations?”
“I worked with Gray to feed misinformation to Card…” Michael said, launching into a succinct account leading up to the meeting earlier that day…the meeting that should have ended with Card’s recorded confession instead of two dead bodies and him facing a bleak future spent imprisoned…or worse.
“Card told me about his plans, the plans that had nothing to do with the CIA’s mandate – a future he was carving in his own vision and image–” Michael said softly, his mind flashing back to the confrontation…the imagery of his former mentor and his final moments playing in muted, blurred colours. “He wanted to continue what Anson Fullerton started, to revive the Organization and take over as the leader. He offered me the chance to become a part of it… I refused.”
“So, this invitation, what you believed went against everything we stand for, was what led you to pulling the trigger?” another agent inquired.
As a rule, an interrogation was all about finding a person’s vulnerability and exploiting it. The intellectually-challenged ones got tricked. The scared ones got intimidated into admitting things they never wanted to admit in the first place. The emotional ones got riled. The trained ones, the ones who lost sight of their purpose and broke their oaths, such as Michael himself… well, they got questioned point blank.
That was when there was nothing else left but telling the truth.
Michael took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Out of all the questions that had come his way, that was the one he needed to search deeply within himself to find that truth before answering.
“Yes.” admitted Michael, knowing those were the words that were going to seal his fate. “And the fact that I knew he was lying. He would have gone after my family and friends before killing me at the end.”
“This was all a very fanciful tale, Westen,” said another agent. All of their faces and voices were starting to blur in Michael’s vision. “Do you have any shred of evidence that would lead us to conclude that your accusations and allegations have any merit?”
Michael sighed. “No. I don’t.”
“Very well, then.”
Michael was granted a small respite from the questioning after that. They left the room as one to discuss the next step elsewhere. Michael let out a long sigh and slumped over the table, letting his forehead rest on the horizontal steel bar where his hands were restrained. The cool sensation felt wonderful against his all-too-warm skin, and he was relieved at the chance to hide away from the world for a minute.
It didn’t take that long for them to come back. The verdict, when delivered, didn’t surprise Michael in the slightest.
“You will be transferred to a holding cell in Guantanamo Bay for the time being, until the investigation is concluded…”
Michael didn’t even bother listening to the details of his transfer, and the list of things he could look forward to in the near future. It was nothing he hadn’t expected. He knew the worth of his career, and the opportunities his very existence represented. He would be held in Cuba as a bargaining chip, or the useful tool that he was, until those opportunities arose where he could be used.
His head continued to swim while one of the directors continued to lay out his punishment. His mind and body felt oddly disconnected, all aches and pains dulled beneath the weight of the fog that had draped around his mind, making him slow and dissociated.
All that mattered was that it was all over. He was now an enemy of every American intelligence organisation. He would be dumped in the most feared hellhole the planet had to offer and forgotten by the rest of the world.
Part Two – The Lives that Never Moved on
Chapter 4
Fourteen Months Later…
Golden Pearl Resort & Spa
Miami
The afternoon sun glared down at the pool, finally freed from the clouds that had floated over to obscure it almost an hour ago. The resulting flash on the rippling blue water was bright enough to hurt. Sam Axe grimaced, and blindly patted all over the table next to his sunbed, trying to recover the sunglasses he had discarded earlier to enjoy the unrestricted, undarkened view of the bikini-clad beauties.
None of them were anywhere near as lovely and wonderful as Elsa, of course, but Sam was just a man, and he only took simple pleasure in looking, not ever touching. He knew Elsa didn’t mind. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have permanently allocated a suite for him in this five star Miami beach resort of hers.
“Another mojito, sir?” A cold, tall glass of mint and ice cubes graced his vision before the soft, accented voice of his regular server reached him.
Sam grinned and accepted the offering with a happy sigh. “You read my mind, Hector.”
“Your sunglasses, sir.” Hector flashed his set of pearly whites and plucked his glasses off the tiled floor.
“Thank you.”
“A pleasure.”
Sam was sure the extra sway to the latin boy’s hips was meant for him to notice and possibly enjoy. But, unfortunately, it was completely wasted on him. Sam’s libido had a one-track mind, and the only name it uttered these days was Elsa’s. He was sure the boy would make someone very happy in the near future, someone who enjoyed everything he had to offer, not only his fantastic skills when it came to mixology.
The Cuban Punch was perfect, as always, and Sam let the cool, citrusy liquid run down his throat with a joyous little smile of satisfaction playing on his lips.
“Mr Axe, sir?” A quiet voice called out, hovering somewhere above him, jerking him awake. He had no idea when he had closed his eyes and slipped into a light nap.
“Javi!”
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“Good afternoon, is everything okay?” Sam frowned at the slight man in the green hotel uniform jacket. Wasn’t there something he needed to double check with Javi? He snapped his fingers when the memory arrived with a jolt. “Oh, before I forget, did you talk to the caterer for Elsa’s party for the birthday thing?”
The ever efficient assistant Elsa had the forethought to assign to him, smiled confidently. “Of course, Mr Axe.”
“Did you guys get the cake?” Sam had been very specific about it. Elsa was turning fifty, and it was a big milestone. Everything had to be perfect.
“Yes, they deliver it Tuesday.”
He made a mental note to check it himself when it arrived.
“Okay, but she doesn’t know, right?” He asked Javi, because that was very important. “I mean, look, I’m counting on you here, okay? This is a covert op, my friend. This is top secret.”
“I understand sir,” Javi nodded somberly, looking like a fresh recruit. “I’m on it.”
“Good man.”
“Sir, I just dropped by to remind you about your appointment for the spa treatment.”
Sam thought about it. Elsa had been talking about something along those lines earlier before she had rushed off to work. He checked his watch.
“Ah yes, in an hour,” he nodded to himself, humming. “Plenty of time to finish my drink.” More than half the mojito was still there in the glass, which rested on the table next to him. Maybe he could have another to go before he had to lift his ass off its comfy perch?
“Last time you missed it, sir,” Javi reminded him. “The spa manager wanted me to make sure you wouldn’t a second time.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Sam grinned, and gave a half-hearted wave when the man took his leave.
At least, the covert ops he conducted these days had next to nothing mortality rates, Sam sighed. Arranging surprise birthday parties, showing up more or less on time for his goat yoga classes or Thai massage treatments never ended up with scumbags gunning for him while he scrambled around looking for decent cover.
Sam’s life had been extremely quiet, boring, and dare he say it, peaceful since Mike was gone.
The man’s unexpected arrival to the city all those years ago had taken Sam’s uncomplicated existence by storm, turning it upside down and sideways until it had left him properly shaken. To say that it had been an adjustment to have that tornado of a man again in what should have been the golden pensioner’s years of his life, was an understatement.
But, he had to admit to himself at least, that it had never been dull. Not even for a moment. Working with the impossible man had made Sam feel alive again, as if his life had once again acquired a purpose, something worth living for. He hadn’t felt quite like that since he had retired from the Navy Seals.
Michael Westen had given him that.
He took a sip of his mojito absently, lost in the maudlin reminiscence. He hadn’t thought about Michael in a while. The hole he had left behind in Sam’s life had finally started to close a little, dulling away the tangle of grief, guilt and worry that perpetually lived there.
Now, just the mention of a few joking words had summoned the memories of all those years and their unexpectedly abrupt end as if it all had just happened yesterday, not more than a year ago.
The cocktail was warm, despite the ice cubes that had hardly melted. The lime and sugar that had tasted divine earlier tasted nasty and bitter, and the rum seemed to have disappeared, vanishing into the air all together.
Sam let out a weary sigh and placed the glass on the table with a disgusted grimace. He would need a fresh drink. This one had taken a turn for the worse for some reason.
He pulled out the two phones he had in his pocket, the emergency one and the ‘emergency’ emergency one. He glared at them both when he was greeted by empty screens.
It was then that his third phone, the one he used for his day-to-day life, rang, jerking him back in surprise.
“Jesse, my man.” Sam answered the call cheerfully, “Been missing me?”
“What can I say, Sam, I must be coming down with something,” an exaggerated sigh greeted him from the other end. “Wanna go for a round at the range? I have a slot booked from four to six.”
“Today?”
“Yeah.”
Sam didn’t even have to think twice about it. He hadn’t seen the ex-CIFA agent for over a month. It would be good to catch up on how he’d been doing. Maybe he had some news about Michael’s whereabouts.
“Since you put it out so nicely, how can I refuse?” Sam drawled. “I’ll be there.”
“Awesome,” Jesse said, sounding elated. “See you later, then.”
It was only after the call ended, that Sam remembered about the spa treatment. While having all the painful knots and kinks on the back of his shoulders expertly soothed by a pair of experienced hands had its advantages, he felt like he needed the outlet Jesse had just provided more.
Shooting a few rounds at a target always had a way of settling his mind, after all. Being Elsa’s man-toy came with a few enticing perks, one of them being able to reschedule the massages the spa offered him freely without any hassle.
And to avoid any lingering hard feelings, he would even drop by there at a later stage and apologise personally, and probably even throw in a few drinks for the staff.
With that solid plan in mind, Sam finally got up from his sunbed.
Gallagher Shooting Range
Westchester
Miami
Jesse Porter left work early to show up at the shooting range, which was located only a fifteen minute drive away from his office. He had good, talented people working for him, and they were more than capable of running the daily operation for a couple of hours without him hovering over their shoulders.
Being the boss of his own company came in handy at times like these.
The range was empty when Jesse got there, and he was waved in by the on-duty instructor who recognized him as one of the regulars.
He reached the staging area and took out his beloved P220R, and started going through the disassembly of the gun, a ritual that had become soothing, almost meditative. He laid each and every piece he took out carefully on the table’s surface and began cleaning them one by one, slowly and meticulously.
The muscle memory took over while his mind wandered. Try as he might, Jesse couldn’t suppress the frustration that cropped up along with the inability to find out more about Michael’s whereabouts. It was as if the man had dropped off the surface of the planet since he had surrendered himself over to the Company a little over fourteen months ago. All of Jesse’s inquiries had returned with apologetic head shakes and polite advice to let it go.
Which only led him to conclude that the worst possible scenario may have happened. Nobody ever acknowledged that black sites existed.
As always, Jesse’s thoughts took him down the memory of the time he had hated Michael enough to actively plot his murder.
He hadn’t known the ragtag team consisting of a retired SEAL, IRA-trained-bomber-turned-arms dealer and a burned spy – the team that had basically bullied Jesse into joining their tightly-woven family – were the same people who had been responsible for ruining his life in the first place. Michael’s mom had even let him stay in her garage free of charge for fuck’s sake!
Finding out that little fact about the very people he had started to treat as his chosen family had hurt like nothing had ever hurt before. It had been enough to drive him insane, and he remembered all those days stroking the same trigger he was cleaning now, imagining putting a bullet right between the eyes of the man who had betrayed him in the worst way possible.
Jesse still had pretty messed up feelings about the time he had pulled the trigger on a different gun – the time he had taken the riskiest shot he had ever taken in his life; not to kill as he had wanted for a long time, but in a desperate attempt at a Hail Mary rescue.
He looked down at his hands, as he always did when that particular memory played in his mind. They were sure and steady now. But they had trembled uncontrollably for a long while after taking that shot.
His mind inevitably started comparing the fates of the two brothers, in almost similar situations.
Jesse had been staring at Michael through the scope of his sniper rifle that day, feeling utterly helpless when Barrett’s thug had wrapped an arm around his neck in a headlock. He had hesitated for a fraction before taking the damned shot, praying to high heaven that he wouldn’t kill the man by accident.
He still remembered the look he had seen on Michael’s eyes as if it happened yesterday.
It was as if the man had seen the trajectory of the shot by some inane miracle, or a mysterious sixth sense. Michael had stared down at the bullet that had flown at mach 2.5 towards him, daring it to kill him.
The bullet never stood a chance.
Nate, Michael’s baby brother, had died the same way Barrett’s guard had died – by a bullet that had been meant to kill someone else.
The kid never stood a chance.
Ironically enough, it had been Nate that had found Jesse later that day, lingering at the reception area of the hospital where they had taken Michael after retrieving him out of the car wreck that had killed Barrett on the scene.
It was a memory Jesse knew he was never going to forget until the day he died:
The kid walked right up to him with a smile that had seen better days. “Hey, Jesse, right?” he said, sticking out a hand in introduction. “I’m Nate, Michael’s brother.”
Jesse shook the offered hand warily. “I know who you are.”
“The doctors are still working on him. We’re not going to get any news for a few hours yet,” Nate said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to be talking to the man who had planted a fucking bullet in his brother’s chest. “You wanna hit the bar?” The sympathetic look he flashed was, incredulously, genuine. “Drinks on me? Honestly, man, you look like you need it.”
Jesse stared at him, blinking uncomprehendingly.
“Come on man, let’s go.” The next thing Jesse knew, he was being guided gently out of the hospital with a firm hand wrapped around his elbow.
He had no clear recollection of the walk they took until the moment he found himself sitting on a bar stool at a pub a few blocks down, holding on to a glass of whiskey with both hands as if it held some sort of salvation.
“Why?” He hiccuped somewhere between the second and third glass of the burning liquid. “You know what I did, don’t you?”
“Sam and Fiona let you live,” Nate said easily, sipping his own drink. “I figured that’s as good as any indication that you didn’t mean to kill my brother.”
“I didn’t. Was trying to save him,” Jesse mumbled, concentrating with everything he had to keep the damned glass from shaking too much as he took a sip. He wasn’t entirely successful. “Didn’t go down as planned.”
Michael had looked dead, lying in the pool of his own blood outside the upended SUV. Jesse fought the bile that rose in his throat at the image he saw in his swimming vision.
“I’ve come to realise that’s usually how things happen around Michael. He has particularly shit luck.”
Jesse almost choked on his whiskey. Nate slapped him on the back helpfully. When his scrambled mind managed to focus again, Nate was talking about their shared childhood.
“… the thing with Mike is, he’s absolute garbage at communicating, you know,” Nate was saying, his faraway gaze locked onto a spot on the wooden bar counter, his mind lost somewhere back in time. “I used to hate him when he sent me away to our neighbour. Loony Laura always fed me her over-burnt cookies whenever he did that and I hated it. I hated the fact that I got sent away like an unwanted package while Mike got to stay home when dad came back from work. I thought he wanted to hang out with him without me, you know? ‘cause he was the cool kid out of the two of us…”
“What happened?”
“I never realised he was shielding me from our deadbeat dad’s fists. It took me a long time to find out where those black eyes and bruises came from.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.” Nate’s words were quiet. “Before he left to join the army, he told me he was going away for a while. He said he wanted to find a way to get a little stronger, and better at protecting me and mom. He wanted to learn how to hit back without hurting himself–”
“Nate,” Jesse was a little too drunk to feel embarrassed by the sob that escaped him then. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” the kid said kindly. “I know Michael. He’ll pull through.”
Jesse knew he said some things to Nate then, about what Michael had done and his anger at learning about it much later. He was honest about the pain it had caused, the betrayal from someone he had come to admire a lot. Nate listened without interruptions or complaints, generously refilling his drink, glass after glass.
“But deep down, I knew,” he said at some point, his words slurring. “I knew he didn’t burn me on purpose. He was going after a very bad group of people. What happened to me was collateral. He could have left me to fend for myself. None of them had to take me in like a stray and make me join their bandwagon, but they did… Jesus–I’m so sorry, Nate. Fuck.”
“Hey, take it easy man,” Nate patted him on the back consolingly. “It’ll be okay. Just avoid my mom until he’s back on his feet and you’ll be fine.” He added with a hint of a smile.
“Thanks, man.”
That was when Nate’s entire demeanour changed. As drunk as he was, he still noticed how stone cold sober Michael’s brother looked right then, as if he hadn’t been drinking a single sip of alcohol during the few hours they spent there.
“You should go home now, Jesse,” he said, leaving no room for argument. “I called you a cab.”
“Huh?” Jesse blinked, feeling stupid and slow and exhausted.
“You’re drunk enough you wouldn’t even know if someone decided to spike your drink with – I don’t know, drugs or fast acting, untraceable poison… or something–” There was a look in Nate’s eyes that had frightened Jesse then. “What with all the alcohol running in your system, you wouldn’t even stand a chance.”
The threat had been clear enough to sober him right the fuck up. It was then Jesse had realised that with all the Westens – be it Michael, Madeline or Nate – all that mattered were intentions. They were an incredibly forgiving bunch to people who made mistakes – people who had their hearts in the right place.
Nate had gotten Jesse drunk, and then made him talk. That had been his method to find out that Jesse hadn’t meant to hurt Michael for the sake of revenge. That had been enough for him to forgive him. Jesse knew that the younger brother would have killed him then and there if he had revealed different intentions.
It had taken an accident, lies and deceit for Jesse to get there, to that inner circle of theirs, but they had all shown him a whole new dimension of loyalty and sense of family throughout that journey. Then, it had been his sincerity that had let him stay there.
Card must have holstered his gun with the intention to deceive Michael, Jesse realised with sudden clarity. Michael – with that complex mind of his that saw hundreds of possibilities in seconds – must have seen right through the facade, driving him to deliver his own version of swift justice to end it all for good.
“Are you trying to put the damned thing together with your mind or what?” Sam’s booming voice snapped him back to the present. He hadn’t realised he had been staring at the half assembled gun for some time.
“Sam, you’re here,” he said with a grin that fooled no one.
“Yeah. You invited me, remember?” Sam frowned. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jesse said, hastily putting the gun back together. “Wanna shoot a few rounds?”
“No, I came to help you paint your fence,” Sam snarked. “Of course I want to shoot. What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.” Jesse said, avoiding Sam’s all-too-knowing gaze and moving around the table to get to the slot.
Sam didn’t push, as if he had instinctively understood that Jesse wasn’t particularly in a talkative mood. Instead, he went right for the throat. “Any news on Mike?”
“No, man. Sorry,” Jesse admitted, sighing. “I guess that’s what’s been bothering me.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” Sam agreed quietly, joining him on the adjoining slot with his own handgun. Jesse didn’t need to explain to him what the lack of information meant.
“But it’s Michael,” Jesse said, repeating the same thing Nate had told him all those years ago. “I’m sure he’ll find his way back, one way or another.”
“You got a point there, brother,” Sam said, lifting his gun in a two-handed grip. “Best out of three?”
Jesse smiled. “I don’t need three rounds to beat your ass.”
“I’m going to make you eat your words, wonder boy.” Sam challenged, grinning.
“Bring it on, old man.”
Jesse imagined Tom Card’s face on the target, and suddenly, beating the ex-SEAL felt like the easiest thing in the world.
114
Hanover Crescent
Glenvar Heights
Miami
Fiona Glenanne stared at the white-washed ceiling, her gaze roaming over the black lines that separated it into neat rows of squares, her mind too preoccupied to fall asleep even after the long session of love making she had just enjoyed.
It was hot and humid, and the air conditioning hardly made a dent in the sweltering heat. She never could fall asleep easily when sweat clung to her like an unwanted second skin. Or when the sheets that should have felt like clouds from heaven for the ridiculous amount of money she had paid for them, felt like sandpaper rubbing against her instead.
Carlos mumbled something in his sleep and turned to his side, facing her, and wrapped a heavy arm around her waist. Fiona grimaced and wriggled, moving it slowly back away from her. The man was heavy, sweaty and too-freaking warm, and she definitely didn’t want a limb akin to a tree trunk resting on her middle when she was already irritated with the night.
Phantom sensations and memories of a different body rose in her mind then, unwanted and unbidden…a body that had always felt cool and smooth when she had felt too warm, and turned warmer when she had needed to shy away from the cold…a body that had always perfectly synchronised to her movements even in sleep, and turned as one with her whenever she did, never too heavy, never too far and somehow always exactly what she wanted. Even those fucking snores of his had had a way of lulling her to sleep.
She wondered, despite herself, where Micheal was now, whether he had any trouble sleeping on nights like these… whether he was still alive at all.
That was not a thought Fiona wanted to entertain right then, possibly not ever. She turned on her side with a sigh, drawing away from Carlos’ body heat as far as she could get without falling off the bed. The room was dark, and the digital clock on the table next to her said it was well past midnight.
And sleep, as it had been lately, was nowhere in sight.
It had been more than a year, and Fiona wondered why she still couldn’t move on from the fact that Michael was gone. It had hurt at first, so badly that she had felt like setting fire to everything in sight. She had been an unpleasant presence to be around for everyone for a long time, until the pain and grief had slowly started to morph into reluctant acceptance.
She had met Carlos seven months after Michael had surrendered himself to his agency and faded out of existence.
They had both been after the same bounty:
She prepped the small charge of C4, confident that the resulting blast and the flying door would create enough of a distraction and panic in her target, making him an easy catch.
It had been a little over twenty-four hours since she had enjoyed the echoing, satisfying noise of a proper explosion, one that had been created by her own hands.
Lost in her musings, which could have been a fatal error on her part, she never heard the slowly approaching footsteps until the man spoke from right behind her.
“What are you doing?”
She was so badly startled, she almost dropped the charge. Whirling around to confront the owner of the voice made her realise she knew the man who had snuck up on her. She had seen him a few times back at the station. He had caught her gaze due to the colour of his hair, the way he had looked a little like Michael in his profile.
Carlos Cruz was his name, and he was another bounty hunter.
“What does it look like I’m doing, you idiot?” she murmured through clenched teeth, keeping her voice low to avoid letting the bounty holed up inside the abandoned house become aware of their presence. “Who told you sneaking up behind a woman handling explosives was a bright idea?”
Carlos’ eyebrows climbed high up in his forehead in alarm when he finally saw what was in her hands.
“What’s that?” He frowned at the grey lump.
“C4.”
He swallowed visibly. “C4 as in explosives?”
“No, as in the main ingredient of chicken noodle soup,” Fiona snarled. “Of course, it’s explosives!”
“Why?”
“Why?” She hissed back incredulously. “So I can blow up the damned door?” ‘You, dumbass’ went unsaid, but heard clearly by the dumbass nevertheless.
“Darren Walt is only twenty-three years old, and he’s a half-starved addict.” Carlos said in a tone that sounded like something you used on injured, cornered animals. Fiona bristled. “You can probably sneeze at him and he’ll keel over. Are you sure C4 is the appropriate response to someone like him?”
“C4 is the appropriate response to everything,” Fiona bit back haughtily. “I never met a problem I couldn’t solve with a well-placed brick of moulded explosives.”
Carlos, to her surprise, smiled. It was a smile that made him look the tiniest bit more attractive. “You should…I don’t know, try words, maybe? The polite ones?” He drawled playfully. “And maybe practise knocking?”
Fiona, however, wasn’t about to give in just yet. “Why should I do that when I have this?” The urge to create an explosion of any kind was a fucking need by then.
“I checked through the window when I did a perimeter check now,” he said in a reasonable tone that almost reminded her of Michael. It also reminded her that she should have done the same in the first place. “Walt’s passed out in the front. We could just pick the lock, get to him and carry him out without him noticing.”
Fiona huffed, but returned the C4 back to her purse. “What’s the point in that?” she complained just for the hell of it.
“Well, that way we can avoid the neighbours calling every cop in the area on us for starters,” Carlos chuckled. “And avoid spending a perfect day like this in a holding cell at the precinct.”
She didn’t have the heart to tell him she had been there and done that, and hadn’t really faced anything she couldn’t handle either. It really didn’t take that long for the two of them to wrangle the half-unconscious body of Walt to the station together, after that. Carlos graciously allowed her to collect the fee, on the condition that she took him to dinner.
He hadn’t left her side, ever since.
It had been Carlos’ presence, his patience and stubborn perseverance that had gotten through to the out of control, self-destructive force Fiona had become, and guided her back to something resembling her old self.
Sam and Jesse were indebted to Carlos for that minor miracle alone. They had both said so to her later in those exact words.
Finding Carlos, and settling into this life with him was nowhere near enough of a distraction to keep those volatile, stubborn parts of her wandering back to the thoughts and memories of Michael, however.
He was the one man she had ever truly loved with everything that she was, and she had fallen for him even before she had known his real name.
She still remembered those quiet words Michael had uttered, the day she had asked him what it meant for him to be what he was. He hadn’t said anything for a long time, but when he had, she had felt as if she had been allowed a glimpse of something truly rare and precious. It drawn her to him with a force so powerful it had left her reeling:
“Spies…we live in the shadows, but we dream of the light…” he said, running the tip of a finger softly along the nape of her neck down the ridges of her spine, his face hidden behind her back. “When working under the conditions we do, covert ops for low pay and life-threatening conditions, what actually keeps us going is the idea that our work won’t remain secret forever…that one day, the results of the work we do will make this world a little bit better.”
“Michael–”
“One day, the world will learn what you’ve done even if your name is never known, and that knowledge is a powerful motivator,” he continued, sounding a little distant, lost in his own reflections. “Some of the sweetest moments come when the job ends and the bullets stop flying.” He said, before chuckling ruefully. “That is unless one of those bullets rips through your chest.”
Sometimes, you kept on going, even then, didn’t you, Michael? Fiona thought, casting her mind back to the time they had all feared he had died during the debacle of that cursed Bible.
Carlos grunted, smacked his lips and moved again, his unruly limbs stretching and folding, as if he was searching for her. Fiona stayed where she was, not wanting to be tangled up in those. After a few seconds, he settled on his stomach, wrapped both arms around his own pillow and sighed. Fiona listened to the sounds of his breathing evening out, which told her that he had finally drifted into a deeper slumber.
The bounty hunter was nice, she sighed again, trying to figure out why it annoyed her. Carlos’ kindness was an inherent, painfully sincere and all-encompassing thing that felt almost tangible at times. For some unimaginable reason, there were times Fiona wanted to slap him for it.
Maybe because it makes him different from Michael, a vicious part of her – the part that firmly believed Carlos Cruz was just another pale imitation she had found to keep herself occupied until the real thing returned – mocked.
She wanted to slap that part too, even while another part started to compare the two men, inevitably arriving at the same conclusion it always did, no matter how hard she tried to deny her own feelings.
Carlos, despite being more muscular than Michael, undeniably lacked the deceptive strength that came into play through Michael’s much leaner body when he truly fought. While intelligent in his own way, Carlos was nowhere near sharp or quick-witted like Michael, and Carlos’ entirely too expressive face hid nothing of his thoughts or emotions. Micheal, on the other hand, was like a chameleon who effortlessly hid behind a carefully crafted placid outlook and demeanour, which often led to his enemies underestimating him to their own detriment.
What she missed most was the inner core of Michael she had only ever been allowed access a very few times, the parts where his raw passion, undying loyalty and a love all-consuming, lived – the damaged, fractured, patched up human parts he never ever showed to the rest of the world. There were even times she had discovered other layers of the complicated man, limits she had managed to push to make him outright mean and wicked. She had loved those layers and the man behind it all with a visceral passion that scared her out of her mind most days.
Now, he was gone. Had left them all behind, thinking he had done the right thing. Or maybe it was the other way around. He was stuck in some unimaginable hellhole while they all moved on.
Fiona had Carlos, a man who finally put her before anything else, like she always wanted. She cared about him a lot, and he got along well with little Charlie and Maddie as well. He even tolerated her occasional jobs with Sam and Jesse. And turned a blind eye whenever she dabbled in her other less-than-legal trade of moving a gun crate or two around.
Maybe, given enough time, there was a chance she could even fall in love with him, the part that liked to lie to her, whispered.
The saddest thing was, that none of those contradicting parts of her knew how to stop her from missing Michael like an amputated limb.
The Westen Residence
South Miami
“Grandma, look! I drew a dinosaur!”
Charlie’s excited voice snapped Madeline out of the mental fog she had lost herself for a moment. The PB&J sandwich she had made for him sat patiently on the plate resting on the kitchen counter, while she had been thinking about possibly the millionth useless call she had made during the course of the past fourteen months.
Charlie, Nate’s three-year-old boy, sat by the dining table, his face hidden behind the piece of paper he was holding up for her to see. On it, he had drawn a blob of blue and green, which he was confidently declaring a prehistoric creature of the wild.
“Oh, Charlie, he’s very pretty,” Madeline smiled, and walked over to the child. “And he also looks a bit hungry, don’t you think?” Charlie frowned at his drawing for a second, and nodded.
“Who else is hungry?”
“Me.”
“Here you go, sweetheart.” She placed the plate on the table before him, and settled on the next chair.
Charlie was a quiet, well-behaved and reserved child, and he started eating his sandwich without any complaints. Madeline watched, letting her mind superimpose the image of a three-year-old Nate, sitting in the same chair, eating a bowl of cereal with the same, determined look that was on Charlie’s small, round face.
The kid looked a lot like his father. But, for some reason, the all-too-sombre look in his baby-blue eyes reminded her of Micheal. It was not a gaze that belonged on a three-year-old, for it spoke of horrors a child should never have been exposed to.
Charlie and Michael both had that in common, she supposed, even though their experiences had been vastly different. But the impact shown in the weariness of their gazes were almost exactly the same.
She rubbed the nicotine patch stuck on her inner elbow absently, wishing she had a cigarette…or fifty.
“Grandma?” Charlie spoke again in between bites.
“Yeah, Charlie?”
“When is uncle Michael coming back?”
Madeline felt the smile on her lips wobble a little. It was like clockwork. The kid always asked that question once a day, always with so much hope blooming in his expression, it broke her little every day at her inability to give him the answer he wanted.
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” she said softly, “Hopefully soon.”
Charlie, as always, accepted it with nothing but another small nod, and resumed eating. He had asked the same question about his dad too, and it had been one of the hardest questions Madeline had ever had to answer. Once she had managed to explain the concept of death to him in a way he would understand, by telling him that his dad was in heaven with the angels, and that he wasn’t coming back, the boy hadn’t bothered to ask again.
She found it particularly curious, and a little alarming, that he never ever mentioned his mother. It hadn’t taken long for Ruth to fall off of the wagon and start using, and then abusing substances again, soon after Nate’s passing. Charlie had ended up in the system soon after that. Madeline didn’t even want to imagine what the boy must have witnessed for him to completely cut himself off from his mother like that. It made Madeline realise that the kid was too mature and intuitive in a way that shouldn’t have been possible for a child of his tender age.
Yet, it was another trait he shared with her oldest.
She wanted to do right by Charlie, to avoid the mistakes, all the wrong decisions she had made raising Michael and Nate. She wanted to do better, to nurture Charlie the way the child deserved. That was why she had given up smoking, and was doing her damned best to win over the custody of him.
That was also why she made call after call to all the government offices in existence, looking for any scrap of information on Michael. She knew deep in her soul that the presence of him was a vital need for the child’s well-being and growth. Charlie looked up to his uncle already, loved him and missed him everyday in a way only a child could.
They both needed Michael back in their lives, period.
That was when the familiar, old guilt crept in, as it had been doing for the past year. Even though she knew blaming herself led her nowhere, it was hard to ignore her own inner demons. Some of them insisted that it was her inability to forgive Michael for Nate’s death, her uncompromising withdrawal from him, that led him to go down the path he had.
The others reminded her of that day, the memory playing as clear as day in her memory even after all those months…the day Michael had visited to tell her about his plans to bring Nate’s killer, the monster, to justice.
She had, in return, told him about her decision to leave Miami for good. She hadn’t wavered, even at the face of the desperation he had revealed by saying that he needed her. He had spoken those words in a heartbreaking tone she had never heard coming out from him before.
It still hadn’t been enough for her to give in.
I’m still here, he had said.
I don’t know about that, she had countered.
She wondered guiltily if it had been her demeanour that had led him to believe that removing himself from the rest of them was the best for everyone. She hadn’t known, hadn’t imagined it in even her worst dreams, that her own grief and the self-recrimination she assigned herself for Nate’s death which she hid, and the fury and blame she assigned Michael which she cruelly left out in the open, would somehow lead Michael to that terrible conclusion.
How did he not know that it was him who was at the centre, the glue that held their dysfunctional family together? All those demons raged and wailed as one.
A small, clammy hand wrapped around the back of her hand, bringing her back to the present. When she looked down, she saw Charlie’s expressive face staring at her somberly.
“Grandma, don’t cry.” The child mumbled.
“I’m not crying sweetheart.” Madeline hastily wiped her face and lied.
“Uncle will be back soon, I’m sure.” Charlie nodded with such innocent conviction, it was almost enough to break her all over again. She hugged the boy closer, finding as much comfort from his presence as much as he did from her, and prayed with everything she was that it would happen soon.
Chapter 5
Guantanamo Bay
Cuba
Prison, or any confined institutional environment, was just about the worst place possible to make an enemy. The regular schedule meant your enemies knew where to find you every hour of the day. The crowded living conditions meant they could choose the time and place that was best for an attack. If your goal was to survive, the best you could do was to stay moving, stay aware and stay paranoid.
All of that became infinitely worse if you found yourself incarcerated in a clandestine detention centre run by the military, located outside the country where no US or other international laws applied. You didn’t usually end up in a black site because you were charged with a crime, or due to pesky things such as due process or court orders. You ended up there because you were deemed an enemy of the state, thereby forfeiting the rights you had as a citizen of that state.
Once you ended up in such a facility, you didn’t have a sentence to complete, a court system to make appeals for your case or look forward to a parole hearing to present a reformed version of yourself for reductions of your sentence.
No.
A completely lawless, dark place such as that offered you no such hope. All you had was the cloying uncertainty about when someone would take you out to use you in a situation that was guaranteed to be even more terrible for you than your current one. Sometimes you looked forward to it: a change of scenery, a breath of fresh air, a temporary illusion of freedom and hopefully a quick, painless death before they threw you back in the hole. Sometimes you just wanted to be left alone: the misery you knew and all that.
If not, there was always the cold, creeping dread that never left you because you were constantly on the lookout for that attack you sensed, waiting in the wings to pounce at you when you least expected it.
At first, the constant state of alertness would drive you, would keep your senses sharp, and your body prepared for fight or flight at the drop of a hat. Knowing that you were at your peak, physically and mentally, ready to take on the challenge, was a great feeling, if you were into enjoying the low-key adrenaline you were always riding just beneath the surface of your bored facade.
Unfortunately, human nature being what it was, that was not a state that stayed with you for long in those conditions. The apathy and resignation were the invisible enemies you never quite got to see coming, and when they got a hold of you, it was usually too late to combat it.
Because, then, the biggest enemy you had to fight was within yourself, and those inner demons almost always won that fight.
***
Rivulets of sweat dropped from Michael’s face and naked upper torso to the ground, turning into dark spots on the grey concrete. His palms were flat on the hard, cold floor, as were the tips of his sock-clad toes while he pushed the rest of his body up and down in a steady rhythm, determined to finish the set of fifty push-ups he had set for himself.
By the time his count reached thirty-five, his arms and legs started to tremble, straining to keep his weight upright.
Two weeks ago, he had been able to do a hundred easily, and that had been just a part of a long, complicated routine Michael had set to keep himself occupied with all the long hours he had at his disposal.
Two weeks back. That was when the most recent incident that involved him, two other inmates, misunderstandings, riled up emotions, lots of swinging fists and a poorly-crafted blade, had happened. It was the thirteenth such incident since his admission to the detention camp fourteen months, three weeks and five days ago.
Anyway, at the conclusion of it, Michael had ended up in the infirmary – his fifth time during the course of those incidents, for the record – with one serious injury, numerous not-so-bad ones and yet another extended stay at Isolation Wing after his release.
The morgue had acquired the other two in body bags – as it had been the case three times previously during those said incidents.
Isolation helped Michael recover in relative peace, since he only ever saw the military guards who wordlessly delivered his meals, or took him out for an hour’s yard time when he was well enough to walk by himself. That didn’t mean he was completely in the clear, however. He never knew when those said guards decided that he broke some inane rule by taking two extra steps to the left on the hallway, or held eye-contact with one of them for more than three seconds. The punishments those kinds of infractions attracted were always swift, involved a lot of pain and one never saw them coming. But, on the plus side, they never broke any bones or made him bleed enough to warrant additional infirmary visits.
All things considered, it was a far better deal during such a recovery period, than having to be constantly on the lookout for an attack that could come from one of the two-hundred and fifty other inmates.
Michael had been forced to skip a few days of any sort of physical activity and take it easy while his body recovered from the abuse and his skin stitched itself back together. The bruises and the centipede-like slash he now had on his back weren’t the serious injuries. That dubious honour went to the one he had on his skull where it had basically cracked open against one of the stainless-steel counters in the rec room. Or it could have been a steel door, Michael wasn’t quite sure. That had happened as soon as Michael had broken the neck of the guy who had slashed at him with the shiv from behind. The other guy, the beefy one who had only brought his fists and the ugly misshapen grin to the fight, had gotten one good punch in at the same time Michael had buried his friend’s shiv in his throat. That punch had sent him flying to make contact with a hard surface he had never had the chance to see, and his head had taken the brunt of the landing.
The resulting injury and the concussion, which had involved terrible headaches, constant nausea, blurry vision and a lot of fuzzy memories, had been bad enough for the doctor to keep him in the medical bay for three days under observation.
All in all, it had taken eleven days for Michael to actually get off the cot and start making his way back to the old fitness regimen in earnest. Even though he knew that it was going to take more time and patience for him to get back to where he was, it still irritated him when he had to struggle to even reach the half mark.
At least, he hadn’t broken any other bones this time, which would have taken a lot longer to heal. Small mercies, he supposed. While he could easily ignore the headache that still lingered around the area behind his left ear, it would have sucked to do pushups with fractured ribs or broken shin bones.
On the positive side, the countless bruises that covered his entire torso and thighs were all shades of yellow and brown now, at their final stages of fading. The pain of stretch and burn on those abused muscles was starting to actually feel invigorating, instead of crippling.
On his fortieth push up, the stitches on the long, diagonal cut that stretched from his kidney, over the ridge of the spine to the other side started to pull painfully, complaining against the strain.
He hoped the wetness he felt running down his back was only sweat, not blood. He wasn’t really worried, since the cut was shallow, and the shiv hadn’t been sharp enough to deal any actual damage to his back muscles, or reach deep enough to glance off his spine. But, since it had cut open a slash of fifteen inches across his back, and bled like a bitch, it had required thirty something stitches, along with a tetanus shot.
He loathed to stop when he was so close to the goal of fifty. So he gritted his teeth and kept going, feeling as if he was pushing up a full grown elephant instead of his own thin, lean body. It took him twice as long, but he got it done. He fell sideways and rolled onto his back, his body having given up before Michael could inflict anymore torture on it. He was forced to stare at the drab ceiling while all his limbs and muscles shook and trembled in exhaustion.
Fourteen months, three weeks and five days…and counting. His mind took over as it always did when he had pushed himself past his limits to the point where he was practically paralysed by over exertion.
It started with the memory of the day of his arrival at the camp:
He spent three days in detention after the post-arrest interview that day before the company finally made arrangements for his transfer. An old Globemaster carried him, Riley, and another agent named Strong, along with a group of military guard transfers to Cuba. After three hours of bone rattling black flight, the plane landed at the private airfield called Dela Garcia, which was located next to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Strong and Riley were waiting for Michael when he was escorted back out after yet another thorough processing.
“You give new meaning to the word ‘despised.’” Strong said. “In addition to your impressive list of felonies, you brought down one of the most respected CIA officers Langley ever produced. The CIA, the NSA, the NCTC, everybody, every intelligence organisation is calling for your head on a pike, which means you get to look forward to spending the rest of your life in this fantastic dark hole.”
“Every single one of them is going to have their chance, once we’re done with you.” Riley added with a sneer. “In short, my friend, you’re screwed. Hope you’ll enjoy your new hell.”
Those had been their parting words.
The agency had done its best to make good on that promise too. Michael had occasional visitors, sometimes after information about his old acquaintances or operations. Some even came with plans to get him involved in various off-the-books deals, to use him as bait to lure out the parties who still nursed grudges against him for their downfalls.
Serving out an indefinite prison sentence had its own set of perks. None of them had anything they could offer for Michael to even consider providing his services or assistance. Even locked up as he was with nothing but a bleak, possibly a very short future to look forward to, he still had an odd sense of freedom that came from knowing that it was only him, and that they had nothing left to threaten or coerce him with.
Most of those agents went back home empty handed and frustrated. A few of them had a chat or two with the other inmates or guards on their way out, just out of spite. That was how those incidents happened.
His mind wanted to wander off in another direction then, the line of thought that always ended up hurting something fierce: His family and his friends and the woman he loved. Imagining them and how their lives moved on without him always left him feeling hollow and miserable, drowning him in a black hole that took him hours to surface to the six by eight concrete box he called home.
Michael stopped himself from falling down that rabbit hole by turning around with effort, determined to put himself through a few sets of sit ups. His body finally seemed to be answering commands again.
That plan didn’t quite work however, because that was when a guard appeared outside his cell to announce that he had a visitor.
***
Michael was escorted to one of the private rooms, which told him that there was yet another agent waiting to be disappointed by his lack of enthusiasm and support. Once his cuffs were secured to the table to the guard’s satisfaction, the door opened to let his visitor in.
“Hi,” Jason Bly, the Central Security Service agent he had encountered a few times, walked in with a grin he somehow managed to present as genuine. “Love the new look and the face fuzz you’ve got going there.”
Michael was not fond of his beard. It made his face itch horribly. But, when you were in prison, personal grooming options were sadly limited.
“Bly,” he said with a smile of his own. “Long time no see.”
“I know, I’m a terrible friend,” said the agent and proceeded to pull three books out of his briefcase. “Here, I brought you books. Heard you started learning Spanish. Figured these will help.”
Michael leaned forward to take a look. Sure enough, all three of them were self-help, language guidance books for beginners. It was actually a thoughtful gift from the agent, which immediately put him on his guard.
“That’s very nice of you, thanks.” He said levelly, not touching any of it even though Bly had placed them where he could reach.
Bly noticed his wariness, and let out a sigh. “Huh, guess the small talk and catching up is over then,” he said, reaching inside his briefcase again to pull out more folders. “Recognize these?”
Michael did because those were his.
“How did you get them?” He asked, frowning.
“Damndest thing,” Bly said, leaning back on his chair, radiating casual confidence. “The delivery was routed through so many countries and continents, I was impressed that it only took six months to get to me. Do you know who I thought of when I tried to trace it back to the sender? I’ll give you a hint. He loves his bling and thinks his spiky hair is his most attractive feature. I think it’s his talent at hiding things that just don’t want to be found. Ring any bells?”
Barry Burkowsky, the money launderer. Sending him the copies of information they had compiled on the ‘Organization’ and everything they had unearthed in connection to it afterwards, had been a spur of the moment decision. Michael had sent them off with a note for him to keep them safe and forgotten about it.
He had no idea what had possessed Barry to unload everything at the feet of the CSS agent, however.
“You know, Bly, I got hit in the head a little while ago,” he drawled, deciding to play his cards close to the chest for the time being. Barry had helped him enough times Michael considered him a friend. There was no need to throw him under the bus until he figured out what Bly was after. “All it does these days is ring like a bell, and hurt like a motherfucker. My memories are all over the place.”
“Pity,” Bly said, sounding unconcerned at his evasive answer. Then he pulled out another file, one with a CSS seal on its cover, before closing the case. Then his expression turned serious. “Because these actually led me to something not very funny…”
Michael stayed quiet, staring at the file the agent kept in his hand instead of opening it and sliding it across the desk closer to Michael as he had done with his previous offerings. He could tell by the way Bly had straightened in his chair the agent was up to something. He didn’t say anything at all because he didn’t want to get his hopes up over nothing.
“Tom Card,” Bly said after a lengthy silence. “I opened up an investigation into his activities a couple of months back – the activities I believe may have led to his unfortunate death.”
That declaration was enough to send Michael’s pulse racing, although he managed not to react outwardly. “Based on the information in my files?”
“Your findings caught my interest, especially all those inconsistencies you managed to put together after taking down the ‘Organisation.’” Bly revealed. “I did some digging and found things that caught even more of my interest, which was enough for me to take it to my boss and get a greenlight to pursue my line of inquiries…”
“The last few people who had anything to do with the Organisation and Card ended up dead,” Michael reminded him, thinking about Max, Anson, Nate, Gray…and then Card himself.
“I know, now he’s dead too, thanks to you,” Bly said cheerfully. “I feel quite safe continuing this investigation, especially since the CIA seems more than happy to seal all his records and call it a day. They put up one hell of a fight when I requested a copy of your interview.”
Michael didn’t doubt it for a second. An investigation had the potential to unravel close to twenty five years worth of operations Card had been involved in under contract. That was the kind of disaster the Company did its best to put to rest and move on, especially when all they had to go on were the suspicions of a burned spy.
CSS, the branch of the National Security Agency which performed covert intelligence support for the United States Military, however, had no such reservations.
“Well, you’re here,” Michael pointed out. “I’m guessing you succeeded in getting what you wanted.”
“Of course, I did. You know how persistent I am when I want to be.”
Michael did know. Jason Bly had been a real pain in the ass until a plan borne out of a lot of creative thinking from Michael’s part and Barry’s special talents, had gotten the man to back off.
“What do you want from me, Bly?” He asked, deciding to play along. It wasn’t as if he had any other pressing matters waiting for him back at the jail cell. He had all the time in the world. “If you have seen the notes on my interview, you know I don’t have any proof. I told them everything I knew.”
“I need you to tell me about Tom Card,” Bly said plainly. “You were his star student. He trained you and mentored you to become a top-shelf operative. You know him. I want you to tell me about his personality, the way he thought and operated – what made him tick. I know you, Westen. Let’s not forget that. I know you despise needless killing. For you to have killed that man the way you did, you must have seen something in him that day. I need to understand everything I can about Tom Card so that I can backtrack the threads I have pulled out of your records and see where they lead me.”
When put like that, there was only one response Michael had for him. He took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, letting his mind travel back to the memories from all those years ago when his recruiter, Raines, had introduced him to Tom Card; the agent who had made a promise then and there to train him to become a legend in the intelligence community.
“Where do you want me to start?”
Undisclosed Location
Meanwhile…
Randall Burke finally saw the yacht through the binoculars about half an hour into the boat ride that took him towards international waters. It was anchored in the co-coordinates he had been sent earlier that day, serenely waiting for him as the message said it would. His transfer to the luxurious sailboat was quick and smooth, and the well-paid fisherman sailed back to the port happily while Burke greeted his leader in person for the first time in five months.
“James,” he said, shaking the offered hand firmly.
“Randall, I need good news.” The worry plain in James’ eyes needed no words. Burke understood because he felt the same.
“I have news, finally,” he said, folding himself on the seat James indicated. The sound of the spooling anchor reached him then, and he felt the powerful twin engines hum to life as the yacht got ready to sail. “It’s not good.”
“Lay it on me.”
“She was captured by a group of Colombians. They double crossed her on the deal she negotiated. They delivered her to Russian Intelligence two days ago.”
James narrowed his eyes, his concern morphing into a slow, simmering anger. “What do we know about the delivery? Location, day, time… anything?”
Burke looked away, taking refuge from James’ inevitable disappointment in the view of the vast, roiling ocean. “Nothing.” He murmured. “I learned about this from Rafael Serrano.”
It had taken a while to lure the paranoid terrorist bastard out in the open and snatch him, but once he had, it hadn’t been that hard to get the man talking. Unfortunately, Burke had gained the information too late to do anything to save Sonya by then.
“All he knows is that Sonya was handed over to one Colonel Oksana Zhirkova of the GRU.”
James closed his eyes and let out a long exhale. They both knew exactly what awaited Sonya in the hands of the very people she had betrayed when she had sworn her loyalty to James and everything that he and his network stood for.
The GRU was not known to forgive and forget treason.
“How did this happen? How did anyone find out about her?”
“Serrano’s been insisting that he saw her and identified her,” Burke replied, trying not to let his frustration seep into his tone, “Says that he knew she was a wanted criminal. I’m not so sure. I’ve been… encouraging him to answer truthfully. So far he hasn’t contradicted himself.”
“Keep working on him,” James said. “We need to know how this happened. We can’t have someone out there selling the files of our agents to the highest bidders. How did he arrange her hand over?”
“He contracted the Columbians for the snatch and grab. Serrano doesn’t have a good reputation with the Russians either, and thought it was safer to have a go-between. He kept well away from the exchange and knew nothing of the details. GRU paid an amount that was more than enough to make everyone involved very happily rich.”
“Obviously they didn’t take her back to the motherland,” James said slowly, reflectively. “Not after what she had done. They’ll need a place to hole up and get her talking.”
Which meant off-the-books interrogations – torture. Burke didn’t need James to describe to him what that entailed. He already knew.
“There’re a few countries that fit the description,” he replied, thinking back to the various lawless cesspits his own country and its intelligence services used in the exact same situations. “I’ve tapped into all my sources, but no one knows where they could have taken her. Not yet.”
“Waiting until someone hears something is not going to help Sonya at all, Randall,” James said, his voice heavy with frustration. “She’s in the hands of the enemy, and the clock’s already ticking. We can’t stand back and hope for the best, not this time.”
“I figured you’d say that–” Burke hedged.
James angled his head to the side, studying him. “You have something on your mind?”
“We’re not going to find her by conventional means, not before she runs out of time. So, I’ve been giving it some thought,” said Burke. “Since this Colonel Zhirkova has already shown willingness to deal to get what she’s after, I thought we should find something the GRU would want more than Sonya… arrange another sort of an exchange–”
James flashed him a dejected sort of a smile. “Sonya was a double agent for more than half a decade. The information she brought to us during that time got a lot of GRU agents killed and a lot of their operations dismantled. What could possibly entice them more than her?”
Burke had asked himself the same question. And if he were honest, he hadn’t expected to actually remember something from his own agency days that could give his desperate plan a potential.
“Not a ‘what’ but a ‘who’.”
That caught James’ curiosity. “Go on.”
“I knew an operative back when I was still under contract with the CIA,” Burke said, thinking back to the frankly unbelievable reports he had seen here and there. “His name’s Michael Westen. He was active in the eastern European theatre back in the 90s. He was there in Kiev in 1998, Dagestan the year before and then Chechnya the year after that. But that’s just what’s on record. During his time there, he had a reputation – the Russians special forces called him the ‘Boogeyman.’ They thought it was the name of a team of operatives, not just one man.”
“He sounds like an interesting man,” James interjected doubtfully, “but we need something that would interest Colonel Zhirkova in particular, since she’s the one in charge of handling Sonya.”
“I looked into her,” Burke revealed. “She has a few black marks in her otherwise stellar record – the time she was handling operations in Ukraine around the same time frame Westen was there–”
“Those were interesting times, weren’t they?” James said, smiling for the first time. He had his own knowledge about the times Burke was referring to since he had started the network around about the same time, and had taken advantage of the worldwide conflicts to do the things that actually mattered. “The oil deals went south, arms deals got sabotaged, Spetsnaz teams walked into ambushes.”
“Westen made a lot of enemies, and I’d say that Oksana has his name on the top of her kill list.”
“I know you didn’t request this meeting with me today just because you had some thoughts. So, tell me, what else do we know about this Michael Westen character?”
“He had some unfortunate times, which is good for us,” Burke went on, summarising the intel he had on Michael Westen. “He was burned almost six years back by some shadow organisation. The best I can tell, he spent all those years back in Miami, doing freelance work with a bunch of locals, friends and family. He even managed to take down the said shadow organisation to the every last one at the end of that period–”
“Impressive,” James commented. “He sounds like a dangerous man.”
“He is.” Burke agreed. “But, the CIA never officially lifted the burn notice, and it is unclear if they hired his services after the fact. But, a little over a year ago, things went sideways. Westen ended up killing his mentor, Tom Card, in public and in cold blood. I found some old footage of him surrendering himself to a field team soon after. Then he vanished and wasn’t heard from again.”
“A trained operative with an eventful past like his wouldn’t have gone off the reservation in that manner unless something terrible pushed him off the edge,” James remarked thoughtfully. “So, either that was a very publicly staged scenario to erase him from the official records to transfer him to black ops…”
“Or he went insane and killed another agent, and is rotting in a jail somewhere for his crime,” Burke completed James’ thought with a grimace. “I know it’s a long shot–”
“But that’s all we have left,” James said. “Either we do nothing or we take this long shot and see if it gets us anywhere near locating Sonya. Do we have a plan to draw Westen out?”
“We’ll start with known family and friends. They probably know where he is and what he’s up to.” Burke said, relieved to hear that his leader was willing to go along with the wildest plan he had come up with to date. It spoke of the faith James had in him, which made him determined to give it his best shot. “If they prove to be uncooperative, we can make some trouble, shake a few trees, get the word out that we mean business…”
“What if he’s in prison?”
Burke smiled. “I’ll show my face around,” he said cheerfully. “You know I’m popular with my old company. If they get the whiff that I’m looking around for Westen, they’ll serve him up on a plate just to get to me.”
“That’s a dangerous game you are supposing, Randall,” James cautioned. “If all goes to plan, we might end up with a CIA black operative or an insane man who’s lost faith in everything.”
“If he proves to be a black operative, we’ll dispose of him once he has served his purposes,” Burke said, confidently. “But if he’s a man who’s lost his purpose, well, I know someone who can give it back to him.”
James nodded gravely at his remark. That was how Burke had found his way to the network. He had been at a crossroads, lost, with no idea where to turn to or whom he could trust. The CIA had taken everything he had to offer and had left him in the dust to rot. That was when James had found him, and showed him all the ways he could still use his skills and talents to do something good, things that made a difference. He hadn’t once looked back after that.
“I know him,” Burke said, picking up from where he trailed off. “He was damned good too. Who knows, we might end up with another soldier in our ranks once all this is said and done.”
“We’ll see,” James said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Supposing that we get Westen in our hands, how do you propose we arrange negotiations?”
“We’ll use Serrano’s line,” Burke said promptly. “He’s already cleared his name with the Russians by giving them Sonya, I’ll get him to reach out to the GRU directly this time. We’ll pose as another interested party whose secrets were stolen by Sonya, and offer Westen in exchange for her.”
“Exchange would be the best case scenario, and if we can make it out with both of them, we’ll call it a win-win,” James said, leaning back against his seat. “Even if things go horribly wrong, and the Russians somehow manage to take them both, we’ll still have an in, a trail we can follow.”
“We’ll plan for the worst and hope for the best.”
“Never a better way to do things, my friend,” James chuckled. “You have my blessing. Go ahead with the plan, and keep me updated.
“Will do, James.”
Chapter 6
Golden Pearl Resort & Spa
Miami
Two days later
Sam Axe walked towards the members’ lounge of the resort, lost in thought. Javi had said the man who had arrived looking for him stated that he had important, urgent business to discuss – business involving a certain has-been spy: Michael Westen.
“Monsieur Axe, Jean Fournier,” the tall, dark haired man with two-day stubble extended a hand and introduced himself with a thick French accent. “Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure. Thank you for meeting with me.” He flashed an ID with the stated credentials.
“Oh, it’s no problem. Anything for a guy from the French Intel,” Sam said, congenially shaking the offered hand. “But, I gotta be straight with you. I haven’t seen Mike since last year.” Which was the truth. The agency and every other defence community branch that had even the slightest connection to it had nothing to say about the man’s whereabouts.
“Oh, well, perhaps it’s worth a discussion in any case. It is a matter of great importance. My agency has been running a mission in the Dominican Republic and your friend, Monsieur Westen has been observed working with some men that we believe to be extremely dangerous. Now we need very urgently to know if he is there on official business.”
Sam blinked. That was a claim out of left field. Last they had seen the man, he had given himself up to the CIA after murdering one of their own. The only conclusion they had drawn from all the blank walls they kept hitting about Michael’s fate was that he was being held in one of the company’s black sites.
Had Michael somehow managed to make another deal with the CIA to let him back into the fold? Could he really be out there, running undercover missions once again for the agency?
“Look,” Sam said, trying to gain more information without giving out any. “I have no clue what Mike is up to. I mean, why would you even come to me about this?”
“Last resort, I’m afraid,” Fournier shook his head, letting out a long-suffering sigh. “We’ve contacted our friends at the CIA, but… they will tell us nothing.”
That sounded more like it. “Well, then there’s your answer.”
“Monsieur Axe, your friend’s life is in danger,” the man insisted, setting off a different kind of alarm in Sam’s suspicious mind. “If Westen is working for the CIA, we do one thing. If he’s not, we do something else. Either way, if you tell us the truth, we can protect him.”
Sam was never one to ignore his instincts. So he decided to test the man from the French Intelligence in his own way. “Okay, look, have you spoken with Henri LaBelle?” He asked. “I worked with him back in ’98 when he ran counter-intel for you guys. He’s pretty tight with Langley too.”
“Well, yes, of course,” said the fake French Intel man, confirming Sam’s suspicion. “Henri tried his best, but-” That was when he noticed the change of Sam’s expression. “Hmm. Clever… Monsieur Axe. There’s no real LaBelle, is there?”
Sam didn’t give him time to react. He grabbed the man by his lapels and pushed him against the nearest wall, pinning him there with an elbow across his throat. “Why are you asking questions about Mike?” He growled, adding pressure on his forearm to cut off his air supply. “Who the hell are you, pal?”
“I’m the man with a knife to your femoral artery,” the man wheezed. A quick glance down told Sam that the threat was real. There was a wicked looking knife very close to the parts he was dearly attached to. There was no way he could knock him out before he slid the knife in where it would definitely be fatal.
“Let me go, or your girlfriend’s beautiful lounge will get very bloody.”
Sam had no choice but to do as he was told. He took two steps back from the man and glared while he nonchalantly adjusted his tie.
“This isn’t over.”
“Thank you for your time, monsieur Axe.” The man called out without even looking back as he walked out of the lounge. “Au revoir.”
Carlito’s Restaurant
Miami
The next day
15.23 Hours.
“Yup,” Jesse said, taking a sip of the drink he had made Sam pay for. Sam had just finished retelling his own unpleasant encounter with the mysterious man with the knife. “I had the same visit.”
They were seated outside at Carlito’s, the seafood restaurant that used to double as their favourite client-meeting spot. They hardly ever met up there since Michael’s disappearance. Sam spent all his days with Elsa at her resort while Jesse invested all his time and effort in his new business. Fiona did the same with her new squeeze on the other side of the city. Unless they bumped into each other at Maddie’s, the shooting range or an occasional job, they never really met up to catch up for old times’ sake.
“He didn’t like it when I said I knew nothing about him,” Jesse continued. “Our servers went down five minutes after the guy left…that is all starting to make sense now.”
“At least, you didn’t almost get stabbed,” Sam griped over his mojito. “You think he was your hacker too?”
“Quite possibly. That ID was good. I had no idea I was looking at a fake, and I know my IDs. It was a job requirement back then.”
“Why do you think he hacked your system?”
“Probably looking for what he could find on Mike,” Jesse guessed, frowning. “We managed to get everything under control within the hour. Nothing was stolen, no viruses or anything like that as far as we could tell. Which means he didn’t find what he was looking for.”
“Or he found exactly what he wanted and was very good at covering his tracks when he left.”
“Or that, yes.” Jesse grimaced. “But if he was looking for info on Mike, he was fresh out of luck… because there was nothing there about him.”
Sam sighed. That was the thing. He had nothing about him. So why was this mystery man suddenly looking into his business?
“What do you think, Sam?” Jesse put words to what Sam was thinking. “Do you think our man is back in the game?”
“I don’t know, Jesse,” Sam sighed. “For the first time since I’ve known him, I don’t know how or what he’s doing.” It was a terrible feeling that sat heavily in his gut, a feeling he hated.
“You warned Maddie?”
“I did,” Sam said. “She’s busy with Charlie’s custody case – all kinds of meetings and visits, still. I told her to keep an eye out for anyone who shows too much interest in the kid’s uncle, and let us know the moment she’s approached.”
“Alright then, that’s taken care of,” Jesse nodded. “Is Fiona going to show up?”
“Well, I called her about a million times and left about that many voicemails. She’ll show up just to kick my ass if nothing else.”
Those words turned out to be prophetic. “Speak of the asskicker,” Jesse said, nodding to point to the walkway behind Sam. “Yeah, I’d say she looks sufficiently pissed.”
Sam turned in his seat. Sure enough, the speed of the woman’s power walk was enough to scatter the rest of the pedestrians in all directions to avoid colliding with her. The stony expression on her face said she was ready to start throwing punches, and the laser-like look in her eyes had already honed in on Sam, the preferable choice for those said punches.
“Hey, Fi! Nice of you to grace us with your presence,” Sam said with his most innocent voice and flashed his most charming smile when she careened to a stop, hovering over him. “Want a drink?
“I’ll have this, thanks,” she grabbed what looked to be a glass of whiskey on rocks from the unfortunate waiter who just happened to walk past her. Sam raised hand towards the frightened kid in apology, and signalled to add it to his tab.
“This had better be important,” she said after planting her ass on the seat next to Jesse and gulping down half the glass in one go. “I was busy.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for coming,” Sam said. “This is about Mike.”
That set her off, just as he had expected.
“Oh, for the love of God! Really?” She yelled, attracting more than a few startled glances. “That’s what got your panties in a twist? I wouldn’t even have bothered coming if I knew this was about him.”
“And that’s why I forgot to mention it in the messages I left for you.” Sam admitted pleasantly, and watched her sharp features twist in renewed anger. He wasn’t truly worried. Underneath the tantrum and the bluster, he knew she still cared and worried. Hiding it all under raging fury was just Fiona’s way of dealing with everything that happened.
“Listen, Fiona–”
“I have a life now,” she snapped, cutting off Jesse’s attempt to get a word in. “A new business, new house… a new man. I don’t need Michael’s ghosts intruding on my goddamn life now. He wanted us to move on, remember? Well, I have, and I’m happy.”
She spit the word out like it was poison. Sam sipped his mojito and wondered how long she was planning to keep up the charade of lying to herself.
“We know, and we totally feel you,” Jesse said placatingly. “See, the thing is, there’s a new player in town. He’s making noises about Mike and lying about his intentions. Just take a deep breath, calm down a little and hear us out, will you?”
Fiona finished her drink and looked around the bar area to steal one from another waiter. They all gave their table a wide berth. Sam smiled at one of the waiters by the bar counter charmingly and lifted both his and Fiona’s empty glasses, signalling for a fresh mojito and a whiskey.
“Fine,” she said, sitting back with her arms folded across her chest. “Make it quick.”
They took turns filling her in on their encounters with the mystery man, along with the story he had been telling to get them to open up about Mike’s whereabouts.
“I knew it!” She declared the moment Jesse stopped talking. “All that talk about being done…” she let out a humourless laugh. “He’s right back in it, isn’t he? They’ve got him running black ops! I don’t even know how he talked himself into getting back in the game! How long do you think it took him, hah? A month? Two at the most?”
“Fi,” Sam said slowly when she wound down from her furious tirade. “We don’t know if this guy was even telling the truth–”
It only served to set her off again. “It’s Michael we’re talking about here, Sam,” she said bitingly. “How hard is it to believe that he got exactly what he wanted? Being a spy… it’s his life. It’s the most important thing in the world to him. You all know this – he said so in the same exact words. Of course, he’s back in, Sam. Don’t waste your time believing otherwise.”
Sam took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. There was no point in arguing with her when she wasn’t in the mood to be reasonable and listen. “Back in the game or not, this man’s presence is a threat,” he said instead, pointing out the practical issue they had in their laps. “We need to find out who he is and why he is looking for Mike.”
“If Micheal is actually undercover on a mission, then this guy can jeopardise his cover and get him killed,” Jesse added. “If not, then we can hand him over to the authorities and find a way in ourselves to learn where the hell he really is.”
The blunt truth got through her anger and Fiona let out a sigh. “Fine,” she said, sipping her whiskey again. “I get your point. This asshole hasn’t shown his face to me yet, or to Carlos. So, what’s the plan? You want me to shoot him when he shows up?”
“Not lethally, if you can manage,” Sam urged. “And just maybe, do you mind hanging out with Maddie until we bag him? We don’t want her and the kid in the middle of this.”
“Fair enough,” she agreed. “We can do that. I’ll take Carlos and go visit for a few days.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me,” she snapped waspishly. “I’m doing this for Maddie and Charlie. I don’t really care about Michael either way.”
“Glad we have it sorted, then.” Jesse said softly, watching her saunter away the same way she had arrived.
Sam sipped the last bit of his mojito, wondering how long it would take for her to dig herself out of her denial this time around.
Guantanamo Bay
Cuba
The Next Day
10:05 Hours
Michael received another visitor three days after Jason Bly’s arrival.
“And we meet again, Westen,” Andrew Strong said.
“Can’t say it’s a pleasure,” he replied with a false smile.
“There’s somebody, a bastard I’ve been hunting for a long damn time, surfaced from under the rocks,” Strong continued, ignoring Michael’s barely hidden disinterest. “It’s your lucky day because you’re going to help me take him down this time.”
“Am I now?” Michael cocked his head to the side, taking in the smug smile and the easy confidence of the senior agent seated before him. Unlike the other agents he had managed to fend off, Strong’s demeanour suggested that he had something up his sleeve that Michael couldn’t afford to turn his back on. It made him uneasy.
“You bet,” Strong said, opening a folder he had brought with him. “This man’s name is Randall Burke. I’m sure you remember. You used to work with the son of a bitch.”
He started to line up a stack of surveillance photos of a brown-haired, square-jawed man. Michael recognized him. He had worked with Burke once to dismantle a splinter group with connections to Al-Qaeda in the Middle Eastern region. He remembered Burke being a dangerous, unpredictable and ruthless operator with a penchant for sarcastic remarks.
“If you’re wondering what happened to him after he vanished into thin air…well, he turned into a terrorist.” Strong continued, piling up more photographic evidence of the said terrorist activities on the table before Michael. At first glance, it looked like Burke had been responsible for a lot of weapons thefts, bombings, assassinations and more than a few kidnappings. There were a lot of photos that remained in the folder, since there simply wasn’t enough space on the table for Strong to spread them on.
“Now, I have tried for years to get somebody close to him, to take him down.” The agent sat down and pinned him with a narrow-eyed look. “Very recently, a situation has presented itself for us to get someone closer to him… and you are going to be that guy.”
Michael said nothing. While his gaze travelled all over the story the images represented of Randall Burke, his mind turned over the possibilities of why the terrorist would suddenly appear on Strong’s radar all of a sudden, and what that appearance had to do with him.
“You’ve already set up a perfect cover I.D. by stabbing your old agency in the back for all the damned world to see,” Strong kept talking, taking Michael’s silence as an invitation to keep going. “That’s– that’s exactly what I need for this to work. It’s time for old Michael Westen from before the burn notice, before this extended Miami vacation, the Michael Westen that got the job done no matter what – that guy to step up to the plate and take this scumbag down.”
“He looks like he’s been busy making trouble all over the world,” Michael remarked placidly before looking up from the photos to face the agent. “Anyway, Agent Strong, this was an admirable pitch, what with the speech and the photos and all. But you see, the problem is I don’t give a shit. I don’t have to. I’m sure if you look hard enough, there are more like me still working for the company, and if this guy is as bad as you say he is, I’m sure any one of them would love to join your crusade and do what’s needed…It’s just not me.”
Once upon a time, he would have surprised himself with that declaration, would have been horribly disappointed at himself even. But now, all Michael felt was weariness that had seeped into his bones, to his very soul. He had no desire to get back in the game, to start fighting the good fight, and to do the right thing again and again, despite the cost to himself.
That drive had withered and died when the cost hadn’t been to himself, but his family.
It was better here, where the only fight that mattered was for survival. He knew that those deeply ingrained instincts, the ones that still drove him to fight and survive, wouldn’t last for too long. And that the day would come soon enough when he wouldn’t even lift a finger to defend himself.
Michael had made peace with that the moment he had arrived at the camp. He saw no reason to change his decision to accept those facts just because yet another terrorist had crawled out of the woodwork and wandered into the agency’s crosshairs.
Strong, however, destroyed all of his reasoning and rejection of the offer with his next few words.
“I knew you’d say that,” he said, remarkably unconcerned. “Believe me, you would never have been my choice for a mission like this. Unfortunately for both of us, the situation I mentioned earlier involves you. Therefore, it makes you the man of the hour, whether you and I wanted it or not.”
“What situation?” Michael asked, trying and failing to ignore the icy dread he could feel crawling down his spine.
“Burke’s started looking into you,” Strong revealed, spreading a new bunch of photos over the ones of the destruction the terrorist had caused. The icy dread turned to full blown panic when Michael recognised the backgrounds and the people in the new set of surveillance photos.
The bastard was in Miami, and the other unfamiliar man who seemed to be his acquaintance, was talking to his family.
“See here, that’s him and his new friend, Dexter Gamble, sniffing around your friends and family.” Strong needlessly pointed out what Michael could clearly figure out for himself. “Now, I can drag you out of here and throw you out in the streets of Miami. When Burke moves into pick you up, we take him down. I have the go-ahead from the agency to use you as I see fit. But I think this entire thing might go down better if you co-operated. Would also minimise the risk to your friends and family if Burke finds out and reacts badly to the situation.”
“Why is he looking into me?” Michael asked, his voice faint. “I haven’t had any contact with him since the early 90s, since that operation back in the Middle East. There’s no reason for him to be looking for me now.”
“And yet, there he is, risking his life and anonymity searching for you,” Strong shrugged. “If we can find out what he’s up to, all the better. But once we have him, it won’t really matter why he was looking for you in the first place, would it? Now, tell me, Westen, are we doing this the easy way or the hard way?”
It really wasn’t even a choice at that point.
“Tell me what you want me to do.” Michael sighed.
Strong flashed a shark-like grin at him and started to do exactly that.
